Measuring Site Success

 

ReadyHosting Web Stats available for ClosingthegapMI.org

 

LiveStats 5.02       

Generated by Statistics Server 5.02          
Copyright © 1996,1997,1998,1999 MediaHouse Software Inc.

 

Begin with Date Selection which can be specific Day – Week – Month – Range (Select up to 90 days).

Select analysis of 10 – 25 – 50 – 100 – 250 – 500 items. Default is 50 items which is quite sufficient.

 

You can both Print and Export the Report.

 

Beginning with “Usage by”, each of the below open up to provide access to a general Analysis overview or a more Detailed view of specific areas which includes graphs and charts.

 

General Inquiry Selections include:

Tracking

Summaries

Usage by

Pages by

Browsers by

Referrers by

Sessions by

Settings

 

Comments and Further Details on Inquiry Selections

 

Tracking

 

Who’s On:

Just what it says, who is looking at the site at this moment. Shows IP, Reverse DNS, geographical location, page, and a few other details.

Watchs:

Watches are used to provide enhanced details where required. Page impression and click through Watches provide detailed marketing reports. IP Watches can monitor groups and individuals by IP Address. You must set this up from the Virtual Server control panel.

 

Summaries

Provides quick access to overview of the most recent data on visitors. Choices are Yesterday, Last Week, Last Month.

Report includes Server activity, Page usage, Browser/OS, Referrers, Network location (by State and Continent).

 

Usage by

 

 Analysis
 Sessions
 Hits
 Page Views
 Kilobytes
 Session Time
 Bytes/Session
 Hits/Session

 

Pages by

 

   • Analysis
    • Usage Map
    • Page Views
    • Downloads
    • Download Errors
    • Least Views
    • Entry Point
    • Exit Point
    • Viewed Once
    • Time Spent
    • Page View Errors
    • Directory

 

Browsers by

 

    • Analysis
    • Agent Type
    • User OS
    • Browser Tag
    • New Tags

 

Referrers by

 

   • Analysis
    • URL
    • New URLs
    • Domain
    • Search Eng
    • Keyword

 

Sessions by

 

   • Analysis
    • Net Identity
    • Net Location
    • Machine ID

 

Settings

Look & Language

 

Controls appearance and language of the reports above. Very handy if you are a web designer for a multi-lingual organization.

 

Details

 

Usage by provides insight into the total number of sessions, the average number of pages viewed and the average time spent on the site. The general report produced is called the Site Activity Analysis report which summarizes all of the page Usage reports for the Web site

 

During the time period of Aug 1st, 2001 to Oct 31st, out of 206 sessions, 35% visited only one page while 35 % visited 2 – 5 pages. Close to 60% spent less than 2 minutes on the site which demonstrates the importance of getting out your message quickly. However, 64 sessions did last more than 2 minutes therefore close to a third of the visitors are spending some time on the site.

 

 

Pages by provides a traffic analysis of the most common entry page and the Top 10 most commonly accessed and least accessed pages. In the more detailed “Page Views” report, you can see the time spent on each page which also shows the date.

 

For example, in an analysis for the time period from May to July 2001, the FAQ page was viewed for a considerable amount of time on a specific day in July. In general, the Index page and Graduates page are the most viewed followed by the location page which is what I expected.

 

 

Browsers by provides details on which browsers are being used and the operating system.

 

During the early stages the site was visited by Web TV 2.6 for a total of 13 sessions. This version is compliant with MSIE 4.0 so the web site needs to be designed with these limitations in mind if we want these users to be able to get our message. In the May through July report, 65 % used MSIE 5.x and 16% used AOL4.x. Netscape 4.x and MSIE 4.x were each used by 9 and 8 sessions which would lead me to consider that our site was being viewed by other organizations. Windows 95 and MSIE5.5 is installed on the participant machines so the following also contributes to my analysis of being visited by organizations:

Windows NT accounted for 11 visits, Windows 95 for 25 visits, and Windows 98 for 57 visits.

 

 

Referred by gives information on where the visitor may have found your site from which includes search engines and the URL of the web page that has you listed.

 

Towards the end of March 2001, the site was viewed by the Lycos search engine. A minor discovery made from the May to July analysis is that the CTG homepage is listed in a study being done by Netfactual (http://www.netfactual.com) which is worth a visit for some interesting statistics about web sites. One item of interest is that as of August 2000, 61% of the index pages on web sites do not have Meta tags. In October, the site was visited 3 times from a link with glhc.com which is the Greater Lansing Housing Coalition. Our founder sits on the board of this organization and they have a link to us.

 

Sessions by provides a Breakdown of Traffic by State and Continent . The detailed reports provide the specific Country and the day of the visit. A benefit here is that the web designer can show that  the site is being visited by viewers from outside the local area.

 

From the site beginning, someone in Norway and the United Kingdom is making monthly visits to the site. In the April 29th through July 31st analysis, the CTG site received a number of visitors from Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois, and California.

 

During this time period, our staff attended a conference in San Diego, CA for all VistaCorp participants. Some of our funding comes from US government grants. Therefore, the web site is having an impact on a national level and may be influential in receiving further grants because many of the US Grant  offices are located in Virginia and West Virginia.

 

Using the Net Location details section reveals that from Aug 1st, 2001 to Oct 31st, closingthegapmi.org recorded 206 unique user sessions. A total of 147 sessions were resolved to geographic locations. California and Michigan account for most of the traffic while Virginia continues to be strong with 22 visits. Besides 14 visits from New York, the site is also getting viewed by Colorado (10) and Massachusetts (9). The New York traffic may be from the Netfactual study as a visit to their site provides an address in New Jersey. Some of this traffic may also be from search engine and directory visits.

 

China has visited on 3 occasions beginning in the last week of September. Indiana and Florida have visited which is where some of the decision makers reside for an upcoming conference we pursued to attend as a presenter of our program. At the end of September we were awarded presentation status and an invitation to attend the conference being held in Puerto Rico. Our web presence may have been influential in receiving this honor.