Web Analytics 学习笔记—— Brent Dykes 《Web Analytic Kick Start》

Web Analytics

Stay focused on how it can help you to achieve your online goals.
不要关注术语，关注它如何能帮助你实现你的目标。
grounding yourself in the business considerations.

Why it matters?

What get measured get managed.
two key areas: how to spend more efficiently and how to market more effectively.

Web Analytics can provide insights into:

Market CHANNEL：社会、陈列、付费查询、邮件等
Market Campaign：微环境、视频、文章、白皮书
Mobile web/responsive design：移动设计
CONTENT creation 内容设计
Licensed content (Investment)：有研究价值的先例
Partners：代理、附属机构、收银、网络联系
Site redesign：Facelift 界面提升
Online functionality：个性化、自助服务等
Onsite promotions: Cost-effective
Resource allocation: 内部员工外部顾问是否被最优部署
Instrumental in identifying high-performing visitor segments and helping to streamline 帮助指出高收益访问群体，帮助过程更顺利

Strategy always Comes First

Often the real challenge is not what can be measured, but what should be measured.
重要的是选择应该被测量的标准。
a general rule in web analytics: You shouldn’t quantify something before it has been clarified or defined.
如果一件事没有被表达确切，量化它没有任何意义。

一些名词解释：
Scope: Websites, Regions, Channels
Goals/Objectives: Target and DDL
Initiatives: High-level action plans

Must-Know Web Metrics

They may not be essential

Page Views

1. From a business perspective, page views indicate how much overall web content is being consumed by site visitors. 访问者消费内容数量
2. Each user will typically generate at least 1 page view when they visit a website unless the page tagging is set up incorrectly or the user is interacting with non-page-based content (file downloads, videos). 除非下载和视频链接，每个访问者都至少会产生1单位的Pageview
3. Users can produce multiple page views for a single page if they navigate repeatedly to the same page during a visit. 重复访问会产生多次Pageview
4. Unless your site is dependent upon ad revenue, you typically won’t want to design your site to increase page views. 增加广告收入几乎是增加Pageviews设计的唯一动机

Remark

1. A page view simply informs you that a web browser loaded the page—that’s it. （局限性）
2. Unique Page View （唯一化）

Visits

1. From a business perspective, visits reveal how popular your website is; the more visits, the more popular it is. 网站火热程度
2. a visitor could simply abandon the site after seeing one page—both count as a visit. 只看一页就溜了也算一个visit
3. As an industry standard, most web analytics tools will terminate a visit after 30 minutes of inactivity. 30分钟后，就算停留在同一界面，仍重新计数

Remark

1. The visit metric doesn’t convey the quality or length of the sessions. 不能表达质量和时长
2. 30分钟内重复登入算一次visit
3. Google Analytics ends visits at midnight or when you re-enter the site from a different campaign source. Adobe Analytics ends a visit after 12 hours of consistent activity or 2,500 image requests. This is one example of why it can be difficult to match numbers exactly from two different systems. 不同的matrics拥有不同的计数方式

Unique Visitor

Unique visitors (or visitors) are the inferred users who visited a website during a specific reporting period. 注意是推断后的

1. From a business perspective, unique visitors show the audience reach of your website.
   

Remark

1. Using third-party cookies for tracking visitors, you may run into inflated visitor counts as cookies are rejected or deleted 第三方cookies会导致统计溢出

Average Visit Duration

Average visit duration (average time spent) is the average length of a visit or session on a particular site.

1. From a business perspective, it indicates how much time visitors are typically spending on your site, which sounds useful but is problematic for a couple of key reasons. 只是听起来很有用
2. the web analytics tool subtracts the first timestamp from the second timestamp to determine how much time was spent on the previous page (the landing page). 后页的时间戳减去前页
3. Single-page visits and exit pages, therefore, are excluded from the average visit duration calculations. 单页和最终页都无法被计算（由第二条可以得出）
4. The optimist within you might get excited because you could interpret this as a sign that your content is valuable and highly engaging. However, your pessimist side may see the long average visit duration as visitors being unable to quickly find the right content and becoming increasingly frustrated as they scour the site for what they need.
   Context很重要，只有Survey可以证明为啥要长时间停留在页面(可能网页内容有用，可能是迷路了)

Remark

1. It can be used as a directional metric as long as you understand its limitations.
   如果你知道这个标准的限制，你可以直接用它
2. 没有context，you cannot assume whether negative or positive.
3. look at your distribution of visit lengths to see how the average visit duration might be getting skewed by a large group of visits that is either spending a lot or a little time on your site.

Page Views per Visit,

Page views per visit represents the average number of pages viewed during a visit or session.

1. From a business perspective, it can show how engaged visitors are with your site content or at least how much page content each visitor is consuming during a single visit. 说明访问者每次访问看了多少内容（多抓住访问者的兴趣）
2. Companies focused on lead generation will want to streamline the online application process, so reducing the average page views per visit might be important if it increases the number of leads. Media sites that are dependent on ad revenues will want to maximize the page views per visit without jeopardizing the return frequency of their visitors.
   如果增加更多引导可以减少application中的pageviews per visit (positive)
3. Page views per visit in combination with the average visit duration
   两个结合可以发现更多的问题

Remark

1. A website can be designed to artificially increase page views so this metric doesn’t necessarily show visitor engagement as much as it reflects your overall design approach. 可以人工增加，所以数字不可说明情况
2. Without additional context and understanding of your visitors’ goals, you can’t assume to know whether the high page views per visit is positive or negative.
3. You should look at the distribution
   以上两个标准都要求现实情况和分布不应该被忽略

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of entering visits (entries or entrances) that are single- page visits or entering visits that leave (bounce from) the site after viewing only one page. 看一页就离开和看不止一页离开的比率

1. From a business perspective, the bounce rate reveals the effectiveness of your entry pages. 越高说明首页越不好（除非信息检索页）
2. A high bounce rate can also be no fault of the actual landing page, but in fact due to a problem created by the upstream traffic source. For example, if an online campaign targeted the wrong keywords or messaged the wrong offer in its ad copy, the misalignment between the advertising and landing page would lead to a high bounce rate.
3. High bounce rate can be positive,
   For example, you would anticipate a high bounce rate on a store location page because visitors search for address information and leave when they find it.
   搜索页更希望高Bounce Rate（在与information有关的时候positive）
   the same applies to blog posts where visitors are looking for only information that answers a specific question and nothing more.

Remark

1. it’s typically best to use internal benchmarks to guide performance enhancements.
   2.低Bounce Rate也可能导致negative（如果只是到第二页）
2. While a landing page might perform well in aggregate, it could exhibit high bounce rates for particular segments of users.
3. Be aware of how different web analytics vendors may modify the standard bounce rate calculation. The bounce metric is defined as a single- page visit with no additional interactions such as a video view or button click (form submission). Google introduced non-interaction event tracking so that companies can select which interactions do and don’t affect the bounce rate metric.
   可能有不同的计量类型，例如单页访问不算上下载或者看视频
   或者根据不同事件类型的tracking判断是否对bounce tracking有影响

Exit Rate

Exit rate is the percentage of visits that terminate or exit on a particular page.

1. From a business perspective, the exit rate highlights potential site issues that cause visitors to leave your site prematurely.
   还没有看完就溜了的概率
2. logical exit point, high exit rate
   Initial or transitional step, problem
   在最初和过渡步骤很高会出事

Remark

1. 有些计算方法的分母取Pageview， 不取visit
   As a result, repeat page views during the same session can lower the exit rate
   但是可能因为这页是central user page，不容易计算（首页）

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors (or visits) that reached a particular outcome or performed a target action. 达到一种结果或进行了一种行为的顾客所占比率

1. From a business perspective, the conversion rate displays how effectively your website is getting visitors to do what you want them to do.
   转化效率
2. Visitor or visit?
   对于面向个体的公司，visit局限性太大
   Many visitors may only be researching options and aren’t ready to convert in a single session. 可能只是研究一下可选向，不一定一次就转化
   但每一次visit都是一次转化的机会
   基于时间结构的可加性
   (visit- based conversion rates will always be lower than visitor-based conversion rates).

Remark

1. 不光要保持高转化率，visitor or visit 的数量更加重要（高转化率低访问数也没有用）
2. Comparing two arbitrary time periods without proper context can lead to bad business decisions. 不考虑环境只比较两个抽象时间区间导致不好的决策
3. Two of the most important considerations with conversion rates are transparency and consistency. 透明化和一致化对公司选用该标准很重要
4. In most cases, visitors are coming to your site for different purposes, and it is unreasonable to expect a particular conversion rate to ever convert 100% of all visitors or visits.
   几乎不可能全部转化

Cookie

A cookie is simply a small text file that is stored in the web browser on a visitor’s computer or device.
是一个存储在访问者浏览器中text文件

1. The HTTP protocol is stateless, meaning a web server doesn’t remember a user’s state or past actions as they move from web page to web page.
   HTTP 无记忆性
   1994 Each cookie file contains a name-value pair with a parameter (__utma) and a unique alphanumeric client or visitor ID.
2. The cookie isn’t a program or susceptible to viruses, and typically the information within the cookie can be accessed only by the server that passed the file to the web browser.
   只有server能看到的信息
3. unique but anonymous so it shouldn’t be tied to personally identifiable information (PII) such as an e-mail address or name.
   
   session cookie
   A session cookie lasts only the duration of a single session. The cookie file is stored in temporary memory by the web browser and then deleted when the browser closes. Web analytics tools rely on session cookies to monitor visit-related behaviors.
   用来监督visit-related的行为
   persistent cookie
   A persistent cookie, persists until it reaches a specified expiration date, and then the web browser deletes it. Persistent cookies are saved on a user’s computer or device. Web analytics tools need persistent cookies to track the multi-session behaviors of unique visitors.
   用来监督单一访问者多session的行为

Attributions

In web analytics, attribution defines how credit will be assigned or allocated to different interactions or touch points that precede a conversion. Frequently, attribution is used to evaluate how various marketing channels, such as display ads, paid search, and e-mail, contributed to a key outcome or conversion.
市场频道的广度

[1]: 《Web Analytic Kick Start》——Brent Dykes