By John Alexander
This month I wanted to reveal a little bit more
about how to monitor the activity of your Web site
visitors and at the same time cover a few of the benefits
of a simple but efficient online program called Hitslink.
The company of Net Applications has been around for
a while now and they have quietly adding more and
more features to their Hitslink system that some folks
may not be aware of.
Some of the benefits they've added are not so evident
at first glance at their collapsible menu but if you
click on the menu to expand them completely open you'll
see quite a variety of useful tools.
Web analytics - So what's new inside you
ask?
Let's start with a feature that most Web analytics
software probably does not offer.
How about the fact that they have included the ability
to perform Wordtracker research inside? I can hear
you asking...but am I going to find any KEI or (Keyword
Effectiveness Index) values like I can in the full
version of Wordtracker?
Take a look: Yes you absolutely can find some great
high value KEI phrases using Wordtracker inside Hitslink.
I found the phrase "keychain pill case"
with only 186 competing pages but 447 searches within
the last 60 days by using a root word "case."
Results came up fairly quick.
Okay so Wordtracker access is handy and works great,
but it's kind of hidden in the huge menu. There are
quite a few things that are hidden in there as you
will discover. Don't miss trying it out Wordtracker
from Hitslink. It's quite handy.
On to the detailed stuff - What about detailed
Web Analytics?
In addition to things like top pages, page views and
visitor counts, there are some other things that are
fairly cool. Hitslink now displays a graphical map
of the world showing where your Web visitor are all
visiting your Web site from as well as details such
as IP address, location, and the referrer information
with clickable links to expand on any of this detail.
A little closer look will often give a hint who is
looking at your Web site and where they are visiting
from as well as which articles or pages they were
interested in. Interesting and helpful detail can
be quite telling sometimes....in the screenshot below
for example, we notice that someone from a company
called Google in Mountain View, California stopped
by to visit.
Here in this next screenshot, we notice that as our
Workshop Agenda page and the registration pages tend
to gravitate upwards, it often will mean that our
visitors are possibly considering attending an event.
What about your Web site? Give some thought to defining
what behavior takes place in your activity reports
just before a sale takes place. Are there recognizable
trends that you notice after you do an e-mail campaign
for example. What about the next time you send out
a media release. If you are into article marketing,
you can also watch for huge no referrer spikes whenever
someone publishes your work (for example in a major
ezine.)
Also notice which pages are the most popular. How
long are your visitors spending on specific pages
will give you a hint at their interests or what they
find most useful on your Web site. Other things to
watch on your Hitslink menu are "repeat visitors."
While you may be getting plenty of new visitors to
your Web site, keep in mind that the more often you
can bring visitors back to your page, the more chance
you have of turning them in a buying customer.
Remember to check out which of your keyword search
terms are actually delivering the traffic to you and
which pages are most popular with your searchers.
In the screenshot below, you see a snapshot of various
articles that we have written and while rankings can
be excellent for many pages, you will soon find out
that some topics are just more interesting to your
readers than others.
Other important things you can review concerning
your Web visitor behavior from the main menu which
has multiple submenus includes things like:
Navigation path
Entry pages
Exit pages
Reloads
Average time spent on each page
Average time spent on Web site
Referring sites
Referring Sites Detail
Major domains
Countries of your visitors
Browser Versions
Browser Versions Trend
Operating Systems
Operating Systems Trend
Screen Resolutions
Color Palettes
Script Versions
Java Support
Cookie Support
Plus check out the expanded menu of features to the
right in blue
