Urchin 5.5 - Web Analytics Product Review

One of the best attributes of Urchin has always been its ease of use. Urchin has always provided easy to read and understand reports and charts. I have seen many Web analytics programs that require a lot of interpretation and explanation to my clients. By having an easy to use and understand interface, the time required to explain reports can be reduced greatly.

As mentioned previously, reports remain restricted and can only be accessed with the use of a user name and password by logging in to the Urchin report module. The first screen that loads is the Traffic/Sessions Graph. This graph gives you a quick overview of the number of sessions over the week's period. Urchin defines a session as follows:

A Session is a defined quantity of visitor interaction with a website. The definition will vary depending on how visitors are tracked. Some common visitor tracking methods and corresponding session definitions are: IP-based Visitor Tracking, IP+User Agent Visitor Tracking and Unique Visitor Tracking (cookie-based, such as Urchin's UTM). For a more detailed explanation please visit http://help.urchin.com/doc/glossary.cgi#S

The data range can be changed at the bottom left corner of any report. You also have the option to click on the bars to make them "explode" or to change the bar graph to a line graph. They use a technology developed by Adobe named SVG, which helps make these reports more interactive and attractive. In addition, every report view gives you these SVG options and export options, which include export to text, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.

The next screen shot displays a similar graph. But. The information that is graphed is the "Pageviews" for that week. Urchin defines a Pageview as follows:

"A page is defined as any file or content delivered by a web server that would generally be considered a web document. This includes HTML pages (.html, .htm, .shtml), script-generated pages (.cgi, .asp, .cfm, etc.), and plain-text pages. It also includes sound files (.wav, .aiff, etc.), video files (.mov, etc.), and other non-document files. Only image files (.jpeg, .gif, .png), JavaScript (.js) and style sheets (.css) are excluded from this definition. Each time a file defined as a page is served, a pageview is registered by Urchin."

As you can see below, I have selected the line graph mode for this pageview graph.

Urchin allows you to view not only the sessions and pageview reports they also give you the ability to view a hits graph, bytes graph and even a load balancer graph. In addition, Urchin gives you a data summary of all of these graphs on one page at the "Summary" link. That completes the traffic analysis portion of the Urchin Web analytics suite.

We will now move on to the "Visitors and Sessions" reporting section. The first report shown is the "Visitors by Day" graph. This graph has all the features of the other graphs but provides an additional level of detail. As you can see, there are orange and green colors on the bar graphs. The orange, represents the first time unique visitors and the green represents the prior unique visitors. You can click on the green part of a bar and it will tell you the exact number of prior unique visitors that visited that day. Urchin tracks this information with a 1st party cookie.

Urchin gives you the ability to view this information both by "Visitor", as shown in this screen shot as well as by "Session". The next screen shot you will see is termed "Unique Sessions." Keep in mind that there is also a "Unique Visitors" graph that does the same thing but with different data points. The unique sessions graph can be charted as a bar graph or pie chart. I have selected the pie chart for this report. This report gives you the percentage of initial sessions, versus repeat sessions over that data range period. You can actually click on the piece of the chart to make it stand out, like an exploding affect. You will see examples of this later on.

Another interesting report in the visitors and sessions section of Urchin is the "Visitor Loyalty" graph. This report helps you understand the loyalty factor of your Web visitors. The more loyal your visitors (the more sessions per unique cookie) the higher the bar graphs will be on the right side. There is a similar report named "Session Frequency" which provides this information in a different light. All reports have their own individual purpose.

This final screen shot displays the visitors and sessions summary overview. It provides the user with the ability to see summarized numbers of the above graphs in an organized and efficient layout. I cannot stress how important it is to display this information in an intuitive manner. Urchin has done an excellent job in this respect! The format comprises consistent navigation on the left, date range information at the top and bottom left. The data you want is right in the middle, and the help is customized per report under the graph and/or data.

We can now move on to the "Pages and File" section of the reporting module. You can see that the first report option is "Requested Pages." This report tells you the most frequently requested pages by your Web visitors. Most often the top page is your homepage but that is not always the case. On many other sites, the top page is a page that does well in search engines and people just go to that page directly from the engine. In this graph I have clicked on pieces of the pie to show you the explode effect. In addition you can see the page name as data below the graph and if you want more information, simply click on the little graph icon to the right of the data and you will be provided with the same data on a day-to-day basis.

Urchin gives you graphs and data for downloads requested, page query terms placed, and posted forms conducted as well.

Another important report is your "Status and Errors" report. Documenting the errors and statuses that are occurring on your site gives you the ability to implement changes and improve on bad error codes.

That now takes us to the section that reports on how your Web visitors are navigating throughout your Web site. I consider this section to be the most interesting and possibly the most valuable section of the basic Urchin module. If you can understand your users click patterns and see where they are dropping off, then you can implement changes to those pages and increase your conversion rates.

The first report within the navigation section is the "Entrance Pages" report. Where are people entering your site most? Most of the time, your top entrance page will be your homepage. But if you rank well for a specific keyword term and that keyword term takes you to an inside page, then you will see that page at the top of your entrance page. You want your top entrance pages to be the conduit to the pages or products you want your customers to visit. Use your top entrance pages well by putting links in visible areas to where you want them to go.

Statistically, your top entrance page will be your top exit page. Your goal will be to lower the ratio of exits to entrances for the page, to the smallest possible number. By adding "call to actions" on your top entrance pages, you can entice your Web visitor to make another click. Anything you can do to encourage that next click will be a victory for you. Later on, I will be discussing the Campaign Tracking Module (CTM). In the CTM discussion, I will be covering a lot of these concepts in detail.

Urchin gives you a number of ways to view your user's actions on your Web site. The next screen shot displays the "Click Paths" of the Web visitor. The most popular click paths are displayed first. You can then go deeper and deeper to see the least likely click paths of your user.

Urchin recently added a new report named "Click To and From" that gives you the patterns of how the user got to one page and went to the next page. For example, if you want to see how people are getting to your homepage you click on the little arrow icon and it pops open the window in the screen shot. It shows that most people just enter the homepage from their browser. Yet, the second most active way to get to the homepage is by actually refreshing the homepage. In addition, you can see what the person is most likely to do after they get to that page. In our example, most people simply exit the site. About 13% refresh the page and others view blog details.

The length of a pageview is an important statistic because you might want to see if people are actually reading the content on your pages versus clicking around without finding what they are looking for. The longer the pageview can mean a number of things, such as they have found what they are looking for and they are reading the content. It is important to take advantage of these pages as well and try to encourage a response from the user. This will help increase your success factor of your pages.

Next >>