Articles About Web Analytics

These articles provide essential information to help you understand how to use web analytics to understand and improve the performance of your site.

These articles are divided into three sections:
       - How to analyse web sites
       - How to improve website performance
       - Understanding web analytics technology

Concepts of Web Analytics

The Basics explains the Key Performance Indicators for websites and how to calculate them. (10 min)

Questions answered:

- What is a Target Action?
- How do I calculate my conversion rate?
- What is a typical conversion rate?
- What is a good conversion rate?
- What is a prospect rate?
- What is an abandonment rate?
- How do I reduce my abandonment rate?
- What is a committed visitor index?
- What is a bounce rate?
- How do I calculate my bounce rate?
- What is a scanning visitor?
- What is cost per acquisition (CPA)?
- How do I calculate ROI for online advertising?

Benchmarking in Ecommerce

Discusses the issue of benchmarking, what benchmarks are available, how reliable they are, and what to do about it.

Benchmarks for Websites

How to Improve Online Sales Performance

Improving Online Sales without Increasing Costs

Case study showing how I quadrupled sales for Motoreasy without increasing their marketing spend.
Improving Online Sales without Increasing Costs

How to Assess Website Performance

Describes the framework you need to assess the performance of your website. It provides you with a checklist to ensure you are covering everything.
Framework for Performance Assessment

Your Website's Greatest Asset - Your Contact Form

A poorly designed and managed contact form on your site can cost you big. Find out how to maximize its value.
Improving your Contact Form Performance

Understanding the Different Types of Visitor

People come to your site for different reasons and at different stages of the purchase process. You need to understand this and ensure your site caters for each if you want to maximise online sales.

Different Types of Website Visitor

Online Advertising

How Accurate is Google Adword Billing?

Many people believe that Google over-charge for Adwords. I investigated this in great depth, including interviews with senior Google staff. The results may surprise you. Google are convinced they are absolutely, always 100% accurate. In fact, they are so accurate they don't even have a mechanism for investigating possible errors - they have a re-education team whose job is to teach you not to complain.

Google Adwords Billing - Accurate or Arrogant?

Performance-based Advertising

PPC and Affiliate Marketing are examples of performance-based advertising. In 2008 this accounted for 50% of all online ad spend. There are advantages for advertisers and publishers with performance-based advertising, but publishers need to change their approach and train their sales staff.

The Rise of Performance-based Advertising

Web Analytics Technology

Log Analysis VS Page-based Tracking

Two methods exist for gathering stats about your site. Why use page-based tracking for your website analysis rather than analysing your servers log files? - What difference does it make?
Log Analysis VS Page-based Tracking

Inaccuracies in Website Measurement

Recording what happens on websites is NEVER 100% accurate. These two articles explain where the errors occur, why and what you can do about it.
Inaccuracies in Website Measurement Caused by Internet Technology
Inaccuracies in Website Measurement in Software

New Methods of Web Analysis

Some Polish academics contacted me with radical ideas for much more accurate methods of analysing websites. This article proposes a paradigm shift in how we see web analysis. At the time this generated a great deal of discussion, but nothing came of it. I suspect this is because it would have made all existing systems obsolete. I am convinced that one day this is what we'll do.
Web Analytics Paradigm Shift