Introduction To Web Analytics

Without a doubt, technology has made our lives easier. Huge television screens and surround sound can turn our living rooms into mini theaters. When we're on the road, we can call from our cell phones, instead of finding the nearest pay phone-which could be miles away. And sometimes don't we feel a little guilty about how easy computers have made our lives?



Well, technology has also made advertising and doing business easier.



Just 20 years ago, companies and their think tanks would conduct surveys and polls-through mail or by going door-to-door-to determine the sentiment of the market. These days, all it takes is a computer, Internet access and web analytics solutions.



You might be wondering: What's web analytics? Simply put, web analytics is a system that determines the behavior of visitors to a certain website. It records which part of the Website attracts the most interest and which landing pages trigger people to purchase or take action.



Two major methods are used in collecting Web analytics data. The older one, logfile analysis, reads logfiles where the Web server keeps a record of its activities.



The newer method is called page tagging. It uses the JavaScript language on every page, to inform a third-party server when a web browser opens a page.



Both methods are now popularly used, particularly by organizations and advertising companies, to determine what their target markets want.



Web servers always record their transactions in a logfile. A program can read these logfiles, to determine how popular a certain website is.



In the early 1990's, website statistics mostly involved determining the number of client requests made to the server. This was a reliable method then, since each Website mostly only had one HTML file.



But with the introduction of images in HTML and websites that contained multiple HTML files, the method became less reliable.



Two methods were used in the mid-1990s to more accurately determine the volume of human traffic on certain web servers. One method involved counting page views and visits.



A page view refers to a request made to the web server for a page, instead of a graphic.



A visit or session is a series of requests from an identified client, which expired after a certain period--about 30 minutes--of inactivity.



Nevertheless, while page views and visits are still commonly used, they are already considered less sophisticated than more up-to-date methods.





Mark Rapor is a Web Developer and Internet Marketer. Visit us at Blue Sky Projects. Blue Sky Projects is a full-service, custom web development resource that understands the critical role that an effective internet presence can play in the success of your organization.