Visitor Intelligence News - June 2002 ======= ============ ==== ==== ==== Welcome to the latest edition of Visitor Intelligence News, the electronic newsletter from Site Intelligence Ltd. CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE - Company news: Aberdeen Group profile of Site Intelligence - Company news: Site Intelligence joins ABCe - Two new technical papers available from Site Intelligence - Feature article: The ins and outs of visitor tracking - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | This is Site Intelligence's electronic newsletter. | | Newsletter contents are copyright (c) 2002 Site Intelligence Ltd. | | You are receiving this email because you subscribed via our website:| | http:/www.site-intelligence.co.uk/ | | To unsubscribe or to change your subscription details, contact us | | at: newsletter@site-intelligence.co.uk | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - COMPANY NEWS: SITE INTELLIGENCE PROFILED BY ABERDEEN GROUP We are pleased to be included in the June 2002 report by the Aberdeen Group, "Web Analytics: Making Business Sense of Online Behavior". A free copy of the Site Intelligence profile is available from our website: www.site-intelligence.co.uk/aberdeen COMPANY NEWS: SITE INTELLIGENCE JOINS ABCE We are delighted to announce that Site Intelligence is now an associate subscriber to ABC Electronic (ABCe). ABCe is a not-for-profit industry body promoting the development of standards for website performance measurement, to aid the development and growth of Internet-based commerce. Site Intelligence is pleased to be supporting this important work. Site Intelligence's membership of the ABCe associate subscriber scheme will allow users of our VBIS software to obtain ABCe audited visitor figures more quickly and easily. NEW TECHNICAL PAPERS Two new technical papers on visitor intelligence issues are now available free of charge from the Site Intelligence website. The papers are both based on presentations given at the two recent Henry Stewart conferences on Web Analytics. They are: 1. "Successful Implementation of Web Analytics" - addresses the business and people issues associated with visitor intelligence. 2. "Web Analytics for recruitment" - a case study on the application of Site Intelligence's VBIS software to the website of the Pertemps Group, the UK's largest privately-held recruitment company. To obtain either or both of these papers, visit our website at: http://www.site-intelligence.co.uk/papers_vin and complete the online request form. FEATURE ARTICLE: THE INS AND OUTS OF VISITOR TRACKING -Tracking visitors as they leave your site- No website is an island: hyperlinks connect your site to others on the Internet, and visitors flow into and out of your website by following these links. In previous newsletters we have looked at some of the reasons and techniques for tracking incoming visitors, for example from search engines. Analysis of incoming visitors provides valuable information about marketing, promotions and partnering strategies. But it is often equally valuable to track visitors _leaving_ your site. This article looks at the reasons for tracking this aspect of visitor behaviour, and gives some tips on how you can get more information about outgoing visitors. -Tracking outgoing visitors: why?- There are several reasons why you might wish to track visitors leaving your site via an outbound hyperlink. This section gives some examples. A common and important case is where you feature an outbound hyperlink to a partner site as part of a formal or informal commercial relationship - for example, two sites agreeing to a comarketing relationship where each carries banner ads for the other. In such cases you will want to have an independent measure of how many visitors you are sending to each partner, in order to assess the value of the relationship to the partner. Some of the outbound hyperlinks on your site may be provided purely as a service to your visitors - for example, connecting them to other resources on the web that you think may be of value for them. In this case it is useful to know which of these outbound links are actually used the most by your visitors - this may enable you to identify other links of value to them, and to remove links which are rarely used, thus making your links more relevant and attractive. Finally, in analysing how visitors use your website it is valuable to study where and why visits end. Unless you track outbound hyperlinks, you cannot distinguish between a visit which ends because the visitor left your site via a hyperlink and one which ends for some other reason (for example, the visitor returns to a favourite search engine via a bookmark). If you can make this distinction it can help you to improve the design of the site. For example, if you find that a lot of visitors are leaving your home page via an outbound hyperlink that you provide purely as a service, you may wish to make that link less prominent or move it to a deeper location so that visitors spend more time on your site. -Tracking outgoing visitors: how?- First the bad news: outgoing hyperlinks are usually not tracked at all. This is because when a visitor clicks on a hyperlink from your site to a third party site, the click is sent immediately to the third party webserver: your webserver does not even know that the link has been followed. This is in stark contrast to incoming hyperlinks, which most webservers record automatically. Now the good news: it is quite easy to change your site so that outgoing hyperlinks _are_ tracked. There are several different technical approaches. The easiest is to direct all outbound hyperlinks to an "exit page" on your own site. For example, instead of hyperlinking directly to "www.abce.org.uk" We might choose to have a link to "www.site-intelligence.co.uk/exit.html?site=www.abce.org.uk". The page "exit.html" contains some server-side code to generate the required outbound hyperlink and to automatically redirect the visitor to the required page. You will probably need to create the exit page code yourself - though a few application servers do provide this as standard - but it is relatively simple. Why does that help? Because the exit page is served by your own webserver, the outgoing click is recorded and can be analysed. As a bonus, you can use the exit page to display additional information to the exiting visitor. For example, many sites show a legal notice disclaiming responsibility for third party site content. -Summary- It can be valuable to track outgoing visitors, but most sites are not set up to gather information on outbound hyperlinks. The required changes are quite simple to implement, for example by using a special "exit page". Any site featuring hyperlinks to third party websites should consider putting in place a tracking mechanism for outbound hyperlinks. NEXT ISSUE The next issue of Visitor Intelligence News will be in approximately six weeks' time. If you have any questions or comments about visitor intelligence issues which you would like us to address in future issues, please email the editor: newsletter@site-intelligence.co.uk. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND BACK ISSUES To subscribe to Visitor Intelligence News or to read previous issues, visit our website at: www.site-intelligence.co.uk/vin. To unsubscribe or to change your subscription details, email us: newsletter@site-intelligence.co.uk.