INMA_A01.QXD

Stage 3: Tools and techniques for collecting metrics and

summarising results

Techniques to collect metrics include the collection of site-visitor activity data such as that

collected from site log-files, the collection of metrics about outcomes such as online sales

or e-mail enquiries and traditional marketing research techniques such as questionnaires

and focus groups which collect information on the customer’s experience on the web site.

We start by describing methods for collecting site-visitor activity data and then review

more traditional techniques of market research which assess the customer experience.

Collecting site-visitor activity data

Site-visitor activity datacaptured in web analytics systems records the number of visitors

on the site and the paths or clickstreams they take through the site as they visit different

content. There are a wide variety of technical terms to describe this activity data which

Internet marketers need to be conversant with.

Traditionally this information has been collected using log file analysis web analytics

tools. The server-based log file is added to every time a user downloads a piece of infor-

mation (a hit) and is analysed using a log file analyseras illustrated by Figure 1.14.

Examples of transactions within a log file are:

http://www.davechaffey.com – [05/Oct/2006:00:00:49 -000] ‘GET /index.html HTTP/1.0’ 200 33362

http://www.davechaffey.com – [05/Oct/2006:00:00:49 -000] ‘GET /logo.gif HTTP/1.0’ 200 54342

Despite their wide use in the media, hits are not a useful measure of web site effective-

ness since if a page consists of 10 graphics, plus text, this is recorded as 11 hits. Page

impressions or page viewsand unique visitorsare better measures of site activity.

Auditing companies such as ABC electronic (www.abce.org.uk), which audit sites for the

purpose of proving the number of visitors to a site to advertisers, use unique visitors and

page impression as the main measures.

An example of visitor volume to a web site using different measures based on real,

representative data for one month is presented in Figure 9.5. You can see how hits are

much higher than page views and unique visitors and are quite misleading in terms of

the ‘opportunities to see’ a message. We can also learn from the ratio between some of

these measures – the figure indicates:

CHAPTER 9· MAINTAINING AND MONITORING THE ONLINE PRESENCE

Site-visitor activity
data
Information on content
and services accessed
by e-commerce site
visitors.

Hit
Recorded for each
graphic or text file
requested from a web
server. It is not a
reliable measure for
the number of people
viewing a page.

Log file analyser
A separate program
such as WebTrends
that is used to
summarise the
information on
customer activity in a
log file.

Page impression
A more reliable
measure than a hit,
denoting one person
viewing one page.

Unique visitors
Individual visitors to a
site measured through
cookies or IP addresses
on an individual
computer.

Figure 9.5Examples of different measures of visitor volume to a web site

= All files downloaded

= 4,000,000

Hits

e.g.

= ‘Impressionsí viewed

= 1,200,000

Page views

e.g.

= Visits

= 120,000

Visitor sessions

e.g.

PPV = 10

VPV = 2

= Unique visitors

= 60,000

Visitors

e.g.