March 2006 Archives

This is the first in a new category based on Web site development, design, usability, and standards.

So when was the last time you looked at your Web site statistics? Not recently? Not at all? Shame! Your Web stats are a great place to find nuggets of information about how visitors are using your Web site. When checking out your stats there will always be a ton of information with many reports. This is often intimidating for almost anyone. If you are a novice at reading Web stats, here are some tips to reports you should pay particular attention to:

Referrers. This report will tell you how visitors are getting to your Web site and from where. For instance, visitors could be finding you from a Google or Yahoo! search. They could have followed a link from another Web site that is pointing to yours. The referrer report will tell you all of this. It is important to know how visitors are getting to your Web site to better optimize it.

Top Content / Top Page Views/Visits. This report, depending on what service you use, is described in several different ways. Google Analytics calls it a Top Content report. Other packages will call it Most Page Views while other ones will call it Most Visits. What they all indicate in their own unique way is what is popular on your Web site. Knowing what is being read helps identify topics that are popular with readers.

Now, be wary of top content always being looked at in a positive light. It can also indicate content that is poor. Check your referrer log and see where those links from other Web sites are pointing to and what they are saying. You just may find out that your blog post or white paper is not as effective as you thought.

Top Exit Pages. This report is great to determine if specific Web pages are performing well. An exit page is the page where your visitor was last before they left your Web site. Google Analytics does a great job of telling you where visitors exited your Web site on many of their reports. Exiting is not always a bad thing because if visitors are coming to your Web site looking for something else, it is good for them to know up front the content they were looking for is not here. But if your homepage is getting a high exit rate, then you might want to re-evaluate your navigation or the content that is being displayed. If it won't get visitors to click through to more content, something may be wrong.

Search Terms. There are two reports you will want to pay attention to in regards to search terms. One will show you what visitors are typing into the major search engines that find your Web site. The second is where it shows you what visitors are typing into your search engine to find content on your Web site once they are here. This only works if you have search capabilities enabled on your Web site. Most blogs do by default.

These reports are key to discover what types of words and phrases visitors are using to find you and your content. This allows you to leverage this information into your future blog posts, writing of papers, and formatting of pages (headers, sub-headers, etc.).

Of course I could go on and on at reports you should look at. You should look at all of them at some point in time. Knowing what browsers, platform, screen resolution, and type of ISP is important for design and development, but not something you would look at everyday. Keep in mind that you don't have to look at these every day, but reading your Web site statistics is important and should be part of your normal routine. The Web is on 24/7/365 and that means you have a presence to customers, vendors, clients, and colleagues 24/7/365.

Not sure what type of Web site statistics you have? Check with your Web host. Most likely they have something as part of your hosting package. If you are not satisfied with those reports there are other free ways to you can gain this information. The following services all require you to add a snippet of code to your Web pages to work correctly.

Google Analytics. Free and very robust on what type of information it provides. If you use AdWords as part of your marketing campaigns, GA is a must because it can integrate your AdWords into its reporting and provide you a better ROI on those bids.

SiteMeter. Free and provides you with most of the information listed below. A pay version will give you more information that you might find useful.

StatCounter. Stat counter is similar to SiteMeter but provides you with more information on the free account side. Their reports are cleaner and you don't have to show a graphical icon that you are using their service unlike SiteMeter.

By utilizing the information found in your Web statistics you will be able to optimize your Web site to better serve your visitors and your bottom line.

Have you seen the recent New Balance commercial on TV? I love it. It asks the simple question, do you play sports for the love of money or the game? I think it resonnates beyond sports and into the business world if you think about it. For the love money or the game...or rather are you in business for the love of making a lots of money your providing the customer the best experience or product possible? I think if you can answer that fundamental question you can set the proper tone and strategy for your business...and you'll be profitable too.

Don't believe me, here are some examples of companies who are customer focused, not out to make a quick buck.

Feedburner – Located in Chicago, Feedburner is the defacto tracking solution for RSS feeds. They aren't just crazy about syndication and all of its possibilities, they are passionate about it. They are passionate about providing key statistics to their customers. Each year Feedburner takes a day and lets their developers loose to each build one cool new enhancement that can be implemented tomorrow on their service. They are committed to keeping a free version for smaller businesses and individuals to use. They create evangelists one customer at a time every day with the information and service they provide. It is that focus on providing tools for their customers to analyze and monetize their data through syndication that is what landed Feedburner some of the largest publishers in the U.S. including Reuters and the Associated Press.

37Signals – Originally a small Web site design shop in Chicago, 37Signals changed their business model in 2003 when they showed their internal, home-grown, project management (or collaboration as they call it) tool. Now called Basecamp, 37Signals launched a revolution of design companies expanding into the software developement world to solve solutions they and their clients have been struggling over for years. 37Signals is passionate about creating small business tools at a reasonable cost. They know that there will be better, more expensive tools created by other companies, but 37Signals is focusing on the lower end of the market. Command the lower end of the market at prices almost anyone can afford and you will profit. 37Signals runs a scaled down version of their products for free with the ability at anytime to upgrade or downgrade levels. They take the mentality that less is more and that enables them to respond to the real needs of their customers.

37Singals then took that mentality and expanded it out to three more products (TaDa, BackPack, and Campfire) and has helped revolutionize a programming language (Ruby) and framework (Rails) into mainstream use.

Ernest Svenson, affectionatly knowns as "Ernie the Attorney" announced today that he is leaving Gordon, Arata and is opening up a solo practice in New Orleans. Here is part of his announcement this morning:

I've learned a lot from Katrina, as I'm sure many people have. One thing Katrina taught us is that massive change can arrive very quickly, and have unpredictable results. If uncontrolled massive change can come into your life then why not try to bring about a little purposeful change just to balance things out? I've reflected on what changes I would make if I could.

I met Ernie a couple of years ago at ABA TECHSHOW^®. He is bright, intelligent, and "gets it" when it comes to technology, business sense, let alone common sense. Ernie has been highlighted before for his reporting on what was going on while Katrina was hitting the Northern Gulf Coast region. I expect to see great things coming out of this challenge Ernie has taken upon himself.

You can check out his new firm, Ernest Svenson Law Firm LLC at www.ernestsvenson.com.