Help me understand please - web logs etc.

[nipplecharms1]

I need some help with this please...

What does all this raw data mean? What do the stats I get in a nice graphical form tell me? Where can I go do get that info? I want to start here in this forum where I fee comfortable.

Looking at the raw logs, how can you tell the sales from the surfers? I want to be able to differentiate a good guy (order) from everyone else. the next step is to model the good guys to find more of them. Does any of the software do that?

I am a direct marketing guy so I understand modeling, control groups, responders vs. activators and understand what I need. that is easy from the DM point of view... As for online, I have no clue.

I would appreciate any light you guys can shed on this for me. I want to know more about my visitors. they are the key to my success.

thanks

Michael

[bijunair]

Use web analyzers like SawMill & Urchin and see the most visited pages. entry pages, exit pages, keywords they have used to reach your website. All these things will help you.

Hope I am able to clear your doubts atleast a bit.

[incrediblehelp]

I would suggest trying out ClickTracks, and particpating in their online seminars, support and tutorials.

OK, what if you don't want to use CT, you still need something so you can start seeing the differences in these metrics from month to month. The first goal here is to pick your tool and then become an expert in it.

Web analytics is something not to be taken lightly. I believe to be a core ingredient to online success.

[incrediblehelp]

Moved to Analytics Discussion Forum.

[dann]

If you can download your log file(FTP) here is a couple that may help. I use the full version and it was well worth the price!
http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0....rt%20&tag=srch
At least try it they give you a thirty day trial for the full version. BEWARE: it is very addicting!
Dan

[nexternal]

Michael,

I'm a little fuzzy on some parts of your post, but in general to track the activities of your users you'll need an analytics program. There are many out there, but Google Analytics (urchin) is usually a good and FREE place to start.

In analytics they refer to these user actions as goals.

So if I own a retailer I can setup a goal for "add-to-carts" a goal for "checkout" and a goal for "thank you page" to get a true funnel of user activity.

You'll also be able to combine this data with total sales, geography, time of day, click paths and more.

If you need anymore info, drop me a line.

[dann]

Originally Posted by nexternal

Google Analytics (urchin) is usually a good and FREE place to start.

Are you the official Google spokesperson here. He wants to know how to view you web server logs in an intelligible fashion. Not add a bunch of G crap to every page he wants analyzed. Don't speak until you have tried a much higher level of technology to achieve the goal the poster needs. Hey I'm a Google fan too they have made me lots of money but GA SUCKS!!
Stick with what you are doing if it does well with adwords great, but I don't think the question had to do with google.
Try real analytical software before telling everybody what is best. You can never have too much information on what a browser on your site does, entry, path, exit. All very important. Ask Matt Cutts, how many time has he said look at your server logs. He never said study your GA. Think about it.
Telling the truth, Dan

[nexternal]

Ya know Dann,

I think responses like that are why some people look for "[a] forum where I feel comfortable"

True, If you are trying to analyze raw logs, you cannot do it with Google Analytics.

However, for someone just starting out; YES "GA" is a great place to start.

You say "Try real analytical software before telling everybody what is best."

Now lets review what I really said..."Google Analytics (urchin) is usually a good and FREE place to start."

Seems different huh? "good..to start"

But I guess you want to drop names like Matt Cutts to prove a point to a new guy. Thats cool too. But now that you've made your point of slamming me (someone you know nothing about), which was the real point, what was the point?

Cheers
Josh

[RegDCP]

Originally Posted by nipplecharms1

I need some help with this please...

What does all this raw data mean? What do the stats I get in a nice graphical form tell me? Where can I go do get that info? I want to start here in this forum where I fee comfortable.

Looking at the raw logs, how can you tell the sales from the surfers? I want to be able to differentiate a good guy (order) from everyone else. the next step is to model the good guys to find more of them. Does any of the software do that?

I am a direct marketing guy so I understand modeling, control groups, responders vs. activators and understand what I need. that is easy from the DM point of view... As for online, I have no clue.

I would appreciate any light you guys can shed on this for me. I want to know more about my visitors. they are the key to my success.

thanks

Michael

Michael,
You are on the right track.
Start with where your visitors are coming from.
Use your stats to see what keyword phrases are used to find your site and if your stats program includes it, go to the searches used to see how you are placing for each term. A little free stats program from extreme tracking (http://extremetracking.com) gives you a readout of the last 20 searches and it links directly to the search page (and data center) the visitor used.

This is the only stats program I have found that does this and I find it invaluable.

Next look at how long your visitors are spending on your site.
Look at the entry and exit pages and their paths through your website.
You want to keep track of the amount of unique visitors and how many times they visit including how many pages they open.

To check the efficiency of your landing page there is another free tracker at crazyegg (http://CrazyEgg.com)
This tracker generates a heatmap for your tracked pages. The heatmap shows how many people enter the page and where they click.
When I first started using it I was most surprised to find out that people would click on the oddest things. Unlinked photos are often clicked on.
Now I make it a point ot link all images to *something*, be it a purchase routine or more information.

If you are running multiple ads online, I find using unique tracking codes like the ones that affiliates use a boon.
As I build my sites in a CMS that includes an Affiliate Sales Program, (CRELoaded), I use the affiliate program and set up private "accounts" - "Tracker @ where banner (link) is placed".
When I want to check these stats it is an easy login to the CMS.
Since the affiliate program also tracks sales, I know with certainty which links are converting.

Hope this helps.
Reg

[nipplecharms1]

Dear Reg and everyone. Thanks for the input.

I use statcounter.com (the free version) that shows me the last 100 page loads. I find that data very valuable in and of itself. I can sometime, if I am looking at the right time, see what keyword and search engine they person came from when the make a purchase.

But I have to think the logs can tell me more. Much more. I do not have the kind of scratch to purchase a big named software. And I do not have the where-with-all to understand most of it.

One of my questions is how to tell a buyer from all that data? As a direct mail marketer, we always had tons of data to analyze, but looking back it seems we were in a vacuum. We know how many pieces we mailed, the demographics of the universe and then that also gave us that same data on the buyers. I am lost now.

Any other comments or suggestions are helpful. I do not want to layer more and more code on each page. I want to use my logs to give me some intelligent info so I can make more sales and make more women and couples happy. And make more sales. :) :) :)

Thanks

Michael

[nipplecharms1]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I would suggest trying out ClickTracks, and particpating in their online seminars, support and tutorials.

Holy Crap Batman, if the flash is lying and the software does only 1/2 of what it claims this is nice. but for $350.... thats a lot of jewelry to sell. I will look into this some more. Thanks Jaan.

Michael

[nexternal]

If you want an idea of what keywords are converting to sales you'll need to keep some log of conversions (sales). This is why I suggested G Analytics. You can have your store pass order information to Google when a customer checks out. Then Google can tie together the user's keyword, geography, etc. with the sale. Thus giving you your ROI (Return on Investment) for each of your ads, banners, campaigns, etc.

In general you wont find any sales data in the logs, so a log analysis tool won't tell you ROI, just traffic numbers.

[minorgod]

Despite dann's rant/cry for attention, I too would suggest Google Analytics as a great, free alternative to parsing your server logs. And I say that as someone who used to do quite a bit of log parsing with WebTrends. Google Analytics may not help you with your current batch of logs, but it will obsolete them in the future if you start using it to it's fullest. IMHO it works much better than any log anlyzer ever could. As far as I know, log analyzers won't tell you conversion rates for ads, nor will they tell you many other cool things that Google or other hosted services will. Log anlyzers have their place, but Google Analytics works much better for me than my old log anlyzer did. And no, I'm not Google's official spokesperson either.

[grahampen]

OK,

My two penny worth.

I spend a LOT of time running web log analysis. I get to understand how my customers fod the sites, what keywords work and what don't etc as well as tracking conversion rates etc. - It does everything you can want and lots more.

I use three different tools depending on customers requirement and what I need to achieve. Google analytics I use for one customer - but some do not like the idea of sharing all their data with google - funny that!

So I use Web CEO for other customers - a great tool to compete with Google, covers tacking of goals as well as lots of useful keyword tools etc - but it is not free - and still needs code on every page to track the goals etc. - www.webceo.com

The other choice (and in fact my first choice for an independant log analyser without goal tracking) is Weblog Expert - www.weblogexpert.com.

What you will need to spend some time doing is to understand the results. As with all these great toys they are only as valuable as the way you interpret the data, and what you then do with it.

[nipplecharms1]

Although we do well on Gozizzle and I would be the last to cut off the hand that feeds me, I am VERY leary of giving any of my live, real-time data to them. I understand the point of view of "G" in needing real data to help others. I am just concerned because I tell my customers that their data is more or less private. (less if I choose to e-mail them a jewelry or toy special.)

What am I buying to add the "G" code to all my pages, and what do I lose?

comments are encouraged and welcomed.

thanks all

Michael

PS thanks Chris for making this the top post pick for 3/13/07. I too think the data drives EVERYTHING!

[brucet]

123LogAnalyzer is the best value log file analysis program I have found. Web Log Expert is good value too, but it runs like a dog by comparison - and I don't mean a greyhound.

ClickTracks I have viewed with envy - it looks great if you can justify the cost. I can't.

Google Analytics is awesome IMO, and getting the same information out of a web log file is like pulling teeth from a crocodile. I know it's a lot of data going through Google's servers. But it's all impersonal, and they already have data from web search and PPC clickthroughs and all kinds of stuff from the Google Toolbar. I suspect they have far more information about us than they know what to do with. So it's in for a penny, in for a pound!

I'm not sure if I am naive about Google's data gathering, or the rest of the world is paranoid. Hopefully I will never know...

[hkentcraig]

Normally a lurker, I have to chime in on this one.

My key benchmark for site relevance is the percentage of unique visitors who bookmark your site. These are your immediate or future customers.

If you have less than 5% of your customers bookmarking your site, then your coding and natural placements are all askew. Less than 5% means visitors who find your site were actually looking for something else.

10%-20% bookmark-to-visitor ration is good and anything above 20% is excellent. Every year when a client renews their contract with me I give them a complete printout of their stats for the past year, explain to them what this or that means and always stress this ration as THE key indicator of site success, especially for "business shingle" websites.

Getting back to your original question, it sounds like you want to be able to pull demographic information fron your logs. Other than country-ID info such as coming from the US or foreign countries, good luck. Unless someone here is much smarter than I am, other than bookmark ratio, time-duration of visits (how long what percentage of visitors stay at the site before bailing), source country, referering links and similar, I don't know of a way of extracting more detailed key information about your visitors individually or as a group.

I agree with the posters so far who plug Google Analytics. Since my hosting service uses Apache, all my site have the standard, ubiquitos Control Panel which I actually like, but for my personal and business blogs which I have hosted at Blogger, I use GA to track their usage and have been pleased with the level and detail of information that Google Analytics gives.

If you do have cPanel or something similar, another feature I believe in using is the "Latest 300 Visitors" feature. I use this primary to see who has hotlinked to graphics on my site without permission and is stealing my bandwidth and to see if anyone has been trying to crack into any of databases (you'd be surprised) and to obtain other useful bits of info.

Best of luck with your site, Yours, Kent,

Originally Posted by nipplecharms1

I need some help with this please...

What does all this raw data mean? What do the stats I get in a nice graphical form tell me? Where can I go do get that info? I want to start here in this forum where I fee comfortable.
I would appreciate any light you guys can shed on this for me. I want to know more about my visitors. they are the key to my success.

thanks

Michael

[nipplecharms1]

Dear Kent,

Do you mean something like this?

Add to favorites (estimated) 6571 / 12900 Visitors 50.9 %

Michael

[nexternal]

In terms of "giving" data to "G" I get it. You and everyone else. That has a lot of implications.

Here is a little secret, you giving your data to G, is why it's free.

So, I'll play devil's advocate this time.

You have to put code on every page. (not a problem with dynamic sites)
If you don't put the code at the bottom, some people say your pages will "hang."
If you use GA for multiple sites G now knows what you manage / own. So don't try anything sneaky!

On the flip, you're not giving away customers PRIVATE data, no address, no phone, order total comes close. But, it's essential for you as a business owner.. Only, public USAGE statistics. Keywords, Ads, Referrers, location, landing page, exit page, goal tracking, click paths, blah, blah, blah.

It's your call and I'm sure there is some great package out there that you can install and I know some ecommerce companies have some pretty slick stats. Either option is probably going to be pricey, so I would keep asking around.

In terms of bookmark... Maybe. Personally, I think it's old school. New gen uses technorati, readers and other 3rd parties to manage their browsing.

Good Luck!

[HighSierraCamp]

Very interesting thread. Thanks to everyone for contributing.

My host has a control panel which provides some nice stats, but I don't know if they're good, bad, or average.

Here are some examples. Can anyone give me feedback on how we're doing?

For our children's summer camp (average purchase of over $1,000 with a decision making time span of 1 to 2 weeks) just entering our prime selling season:

* 1.2 visits per visitor
* 1.7 pages per visit (top two pages are home page and dates/tuition)
* 9.6% connect by either typing the address directly or by bookmark
* 56% bookmark the site
* Time spent on the site:
- 0 to 30 seconds: 81%
- 30s to 2m: 10%
- 2m to 5m: 3%
- 5m+: 6%

Thanks.