Archive: Web Analytics

Get Your Competitor’s Web Traffic Data

Last Updated by Man Tran

Different tools to help you with your competitive website data analysis

Get your competitor's web traffic data

This post was originally posted several years ago and was last updated in 2017

In an earlier post SWOT analysis for your website, I mentioned the four elements of your SWOT analysis include identifying your website strength (S), uncovering your its weaknesses (W), identifying opportunities (O) for the site and uncovering threats (T) against it. While a decent web analytics application like Google Analytics can help you get insight into your own website S and W elements, what and how can you know about your competitor’s web performance in order to make your SWOT analysis more complete? I emphasized “web performance” as opposed to other general information that you can obtain by browsing your competitors’ websites. Below are some tools to help you get some idea about your competitors’ website performance.  Read more...


Yahoo! Homepage Re-Design and Your Homepage Re-Design

Last Updated by Man Tran

About the new Yahoo homepage and using web analytics data to guide homepage and website redesign

Recently (October 2012), the Internet, including CNET, TechCrunch and Business Insider all had articles about the upcoming re-designed Yahoo homepage under the new CEO Marissa Mayer. The responses for the new (not launched yet) homepage were mixed; while many praised the new design for its leaner arrangement and more search-focused, others thought the changes were not significant, not worth mentioning or implementing etc. This article will give you a brief overview of the said changes, but more importantly a possible explanation for the grounds for those changes as well as the strategies that Yahoo is adopting through the new design.  Read more...


What to Do When Your Website Traffic Dropped

Last Updated by Man Tran

Use fish-bone technique to diagnose causes of your site traffic changes

When Website Traffic Dropped

With the introduction of Google Panda and Penguin (mentioned in Google Updates and Your Search Ranking) many sites experienced significant drop in search ranking and web traffic. If your site is among those sites, and you’re aware of Google and other search engine algorithm changes, you can easily jump to the conclusion that the drop in traffic is due to search algorithm updates. While your judgement might be correct, it’s not sufficient. This post will give you an overview of how to uncover the issue, or more exactly the cause(s) of the issue by using the fish-bone diagram.  Read more...


Web Analytics Methods

Last Updated by Man Tran

An overview of the two methodologies used in web analytics: page tagging and web log file

Web analytics method

As mentioned in my other post about What Google Analytics Can’t Do, one of the key factors of getting your site a visible ranking is to know how well it performs with search engines and how well it meets your site visitors’ needs. To know about this, you must use one or more web analytics tools, whose function is to provide collection, measurement and reporting of web traffic data. There are different tools and most if not all of them are based on either one of the two methodologies: page tagging or web server log files.  Read more...


Web metrics: Average Time on Site: The Longer The Better?

Last Updated by Michelle Sullivan

Sorry to hear that your viewers stay on your website so long!

Web usability | Viewer's longer stay - not always a good thing

The story

A marketing/web coordinator has just finished his first web traffic analysis and report, and he is very pleased with the company website performance / web metrics in the last few months. The best item of all he thinks is the “Average time on site” item — telling him how long on average his viewers stay on the site. It’s about 5 minutes, so people must find his company website interesting and stay long to find more information.  Read more...


Web metrics: Website traffic – The More The Better?

Last Updated by Michelle Sullivan

With this post and some other posts about web usability and web metrics I take a different approach. Instead of going straight to the point and talking about web metrics and web usability, I chose a lengthier but more unexpected route — telling story for a change. Hopefully, you find it useful and interesting to read.

Sorry to hear that your website has tons of traffic!

Web usability | High traffic - not always a good thing

The story

A web designer guaranteed his client “I’ll optimize your website so that in the next couple of months you’ll get tons of traffic to your online store!” A couple of months later, the client came back to see her designer and requested “Could you… somehow de-optimize the site so that it gets less traffic?” “Huh????”  Read more...