topic 4

1) Visits: a series of requests from the same uniquely identified client with a set timeout, often 30 minutes. A visit contains one or more page views. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics)

Page views: a request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics)

Bounce rate: the percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics) It changes all the time.

2) Three sources are direct traffic, referring sites and search engines.

The most traffic are from google.

3) Internet Explorer is the most popular, which has a 67% usage share.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers)

4) 355 visits came from 24 countries/territories.

Top three countries are Australia, United States and United Kingdom.

5)(a) What you can track
Visitors viewing the site; new vs. returning, language they use to view the page, time on site, bounce rates, browser capabilities. Traffic sources; search engines, keywords used to search.
(b) What you can track over time
New vs. returning visitors, visits per hour/day/week/month, visitor loyalty (returning), how often they visit (regency), depth (pages visited) and length of visits, and much more.
(c) What you can’t track.
The reason why they visit the site, age of the visitors (unless the site actively collects data eg survey).

6) high bounce rate: the high percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics)
key words: Keywords are the words that are used to reveal the internal structure of an author's reasoning. While they are used primarily for rhetoric, they are also used in a strictly grammatical sense for structural composition, reasoning, and comprehension. Indeed, they are an essential part of any language.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keywords)

Average Page Depth: Page Depth is the average number of page views a visitor consumes before ending their session. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of sessions and is also called Page Views per Session or PV/Session.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics)

click through rate: CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if a banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click-through_rate)

click: In the world wide web advertising industry, selection of a banner ad by a user. The effectiveness of Web advertisements are measured by their click-through rate - how often people who see the ad click on it.

Cookie: A cookie is information that a Web site puts on your hard disk so that it can remember something about you at a later time. (More technically, it is information for future use that is stored by the server on the client side of a client/server communication.) Typically, a cookie records your preferences when using a particular site. Using the Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), each request for a Web page is independent of all other requests. For this reason, the Web page server has no memory of what pages it has sent to a user previously or anything about your previous visits. A cookie is a mechanism that allows the server to store its own information about a user on the user's own computer. You can view the cookies that have been stored on your hard disk (although the content stored in each cookie may not make much sense to you). The location of the cookies depends on the browser. Internet Explorer stores each cookie as a separate file under a Windows subdirectory. Netscape stores all cookies in a single cookies.txt fle. Opera stores them in a single cookies.dat file.
Cookies are commonly used to rotate the banner ads that a site sends so that it doesn't keep sending the same ad as it sends you a succession of requested pages. They can also be used to customize pages for you based on your browser type or other information you may have provided the Web site. Web users must agree to let cookies be saved for them, but, in general, it helps Web sites to serve users better. (http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid92_gci211838,00.html)

Impression: An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user's screen. Anytime you see a banner, that is an impression. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics)

Hyperlink: usually shortened to link, is a directly followable reference within a hypertext document.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink)

Navigation: Navigation is the process of reading, and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks. The word navigate is derived from the Latin "navigare", meaning "to sail". All navigational techniques involve locating the navigator's position compared to known locations or patterns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation)

Session: A series of requests from the same uniquely identified client with a set timeout, often 30 minutes. A visit contains one or more page views.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics)

Unique Visitors: The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor's computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics)

URL: is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often, imprecisely and confusingly, used as a synonym for uniform resource identifier. The confusion in usage stems from historically different interpretations of the semantics of the terms involved. In popular language, a URL is also referred to as a Web address.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL)

Visitor Session: A Visitor Session is a defined period of interaction between a Visitor (both unique and untrackable visitor types) and a website.( http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33095)

Comparison shopping: Comparison shopping clearly goes beyond comparing prices. Finding the cheapest items doesn’t usually take a great deal of effort. However, finding the best quality items for the least amount of money is another story. This is one of the reasons that comparison shopping is becoming an industry of its own.( http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-comparison-shopping.htm)