Web statistics, myths and mysteries : beyond hits and page views
In the past, it was easy to get confused about web stats. You could find websites that would talk of having 250,000 "hits" a month, hits being a wildly inaccurate way to monitor traffic....why? Because if I have a page with some text and five images, when you load that page in your browser it counts as six hits, one for the page and five for the images.
Nielsen NetRatings' (a global marketing company that records large site traffic) then moved to looking at page views. This moved away from hits and took into consideration how many pages were viewed by a visitor. Unique visitors (my page views as opposed to yours) then started to be termed as your sites 'Reach' and would separate unique visitors and their page views, using these two as the main statistical measurement out there.
It helped large sites understand how many people were visiting. Whilst reach and page views gave advertisers an ability to sell online, underpinning the first dot-com boom and still being a massive resource today. In Australia alone, online advertising spend topped $1 billion in 2007.
With the arrival of new web technologies like Ajax, the page itself doesn't reload but the content still changes. Thus making page views obsolete (see example here - click on any of the tabs across the top of the page, same page, new content). A visitor can look at dozens of new content sections, but the page they're visiting remains the same! To help combat this, Nielsen has just released 'Total Time' counts, which account for how long a visitor spends on a page and has removed or killed off page views. Total Time is better than anything before, but still....how many times do you browse to a page, get distracted, go to a meeting or lunch and and leave the browser open?
I don't know if there is a fair way to monitor web traffic perfectly but I think it's getting better. Regardless of some of the failings, people should be looking at their statistics. It's really important to look at your site past the date of launch. At Efront, we try and work with our clients past the launch of their store, site or blog to make sure they are getting the best return they can from it. This includes making sure that the content is updated regularly, utilising marketing tools like email subscription services and checking back on their statistics. All of the hosting services we offer include comprehensive statistical information that make this easier and let our clients tailor their content and their message to suit their audience.
My rant for the day is over :) Get in touch if you've got any questions or if you'd like to see how we can help you get more out of your online presence...
All the best,
Mark
Labels: Online-Stores, statistics, Web-Hosting, Web-statistics
Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
MySpace Statistics and Design
We had a great response to the recent post on the MySpace redesign we did for Fiona Burnett - www.myspace.com/fionaburnett - and to be honest I was a little shocked at the traffic we got.
We all know it's popular, but I thought I'd look into the stats behind MySpace. Steve Reubel at Micro Persuasion has listed some info on (what I think) is one of the ugliest and hardest to use sites out there.
- It is the largest online social networking portal on the web
- It has 61 + million registered users with 21+ million unique visitors
**note : Media kit from MySpace now says 64 million** - It's the second largest destination on the web, by page views
**note : now relegated to number 6 behind Yahoo, MSN, Google, YouTube, Windows Live - alexa.com** - It splits 50.2% male, 49.8% female
- They reach more men online than ESPN.com. They reach more females online than iVillage.
- The primary age demo is 16-34
- They have 1.4 million registered bands, 350,000 band blogs
- The site attracts 220,000 new registrants daily
**note - what the??** - There are 50,000 groups including fashion, health, wellness & fitness, sports and recreation, music, film, TV, etc.
- And last but not least it costs $35,000 to launch a profile for marketing purposes.
Wow. Again, no matter how much any of us can disapprove of the way MySpace looks and works, you cannot argue with those numbers.
All we can do is continue in our quest to clean MySpace up. If you've got a profile you'd like cleaned up (re-skinned/designed/pimped etc) feel free to get in touch to learn more.
All the best,
Mark
Labels: design, My Space, MySpace, pimp, redesign, reskin, statistics
Posted on Wednesday, July 04, 2007
