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
|
In Summary:
Overall, I like the
Hitslink system mainly because there is no time-consuming
program that needs to run in order to analyze log files. (In
fact no log files are even needed to use the system.) It's
very easy to just quickly set up and begin using it. All you do is add
a bit of code to your pages that they supply you with and
that's it. It could not be simpler.
The other thing I
was pleased to see, was that they added Wordtracker into the
mix. I never get tired of using this tool.
Okay, so in order to access your statistics in real-time after
you sign up, you
simply enter you user name and password and your reports are
ready there for you to review each time you go into the main
menu. The menu system works
great and you can view your statistics or view results in a
flexible array of variations.
You can also
easily drill down to find "behaviorally" related
information such as "conversion rates" or
"average order size" or "time between
transactions." Clearly there is more here than some Web
sites may need but by the same token, it's nice to have the
options if they are important to your particular business.
That concludes our
review for now.
If you would like to try the Hitslink system for a 30
day FREE Trial - it's very easy to set up.
Just click
here to get started and you'll be tracking your visitors
actions in just minutes. Stand by for more
product and service reviews in the future.
I wish you the very
best of continued Web visibility and success for the
future.
I also hope that you'll consider coming out to visit Robin
Nobles and I in the near future at one of our Complete
5-Day SEO Mastery Workshops in 2006. It would be a
pleasure to work with you in person for a few days and help
you on building your SEO skills right up to speed. If you'd
like to see our future
Workshop dates, they are here.
Best regards,
John Alexander
John@searchengineworkshops.com
About John Alexander
John Alexander is Co-director of Training at Search
Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with partner
Robin Nobles as well as online search engine marketing courses
through Online Web
Training. John is author of an
e-book called Wordtracker
Magic and co-author of
the Totally Non-Technical
Guide for A Successful Web Site.
We'll keep you advised on all of our future
training dates the moment things are firmed up.
Simply enter your name and e-mail in the box below.
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