Web Analytics: three aspects to check

Compete is an interesting and useful tool in terms of web analysis. It has more functions than Google Trends and Baidu Index, and more convenient to use than Google Analytics.

From Compete's information, I get to know three aspects to check when analyzing a website. And they are (copyright belonged to Compete.com, haha):

Visitor Index

1. Unique Visitors

The Unique Visitors metric only counts a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. Unique Visitors are typically used to determine how popular a site is.

Recommendation: To best understand the popularity of a site, you should consider additional metrics beyond Unique Visitors.

For instance, Site X could drive up its Unique Visitors by buying a lot of advertising across the Internet. However, many of these people may leave the site immediately. Use Engagement metrics to understand how much time people spend on a site and how many pages they look at on average during each visit to more fully understand the site's popularity.

2. Rank

The Compete Rank is based on Unique Visitors and does not consider page views or number of visits made to the site. Rank is often used as a compliment to Unique Visitors to provide a relative metric that shows the significance of a site.

For example, in March 2007, eBay attracted 75M people, which ranked as the third largest site on the Internet within the U.S.

3. Reach

Reach measures how many people visit a website as a percentage of all U.S. Internet users online.

This metric should be used alongside Attention to measure the impact of planned or unplanned events, such as new advertising campaigns, product/service launches or general site growth.

4.Total Time Spent

Total Time Spent considers all the time we collectively spend online and is a function of the number of people who visit a site, how often these people visit a site, and how long they stay on a site.

Although unique visitors and page views are critical pieces of the puzzle - these metrics often fail to accurately measure engagement on sites using technologies such as AJAX and online video.

Recommendation: Total Time Spent can be used in conjunction with Other metrics (such as Unique Visitors or Visits) to calculate additional engagement metrics, such as Average Stay or average time spent on a site per visitor.

5. Visits

Visits are initiated when a user enters a site. As the user interacts with the site the visit is live. Visits are considered live until the user's interaction with the site has ceased for a 30-minute period.

For instance, User A enters Yahoo at 9:00. User A checks their email and reviews the week's weather forecast. User A then goes to a meeting at 9:30. She returns at 10:30 and checks her Yahoo email again. Since 30 minutes lapsed between her two interactions User A is considered "one person" that made "two visits".

Engagement

1. Attention

Attention considers all the time we collectively spend online and then determines what percentage of that time was spent on a given site.

Although unique visitors and page views are critical pieces of the puzzle - these metrics often fail to accurately measure engagement on sites using technologies such as AJAX and online video.

Attention is a powerful way to plan and measure the web because it is a finite resource that we manage selfishly. We grant our attention to people, activities and websites that merit receiving our most precious resource - time. If a site can garner more of an individual's time it should generally be considered a good thing. With that said, there are exceptions (Search Engines for example), which is why we don't present Attention as the king of all metrics. We see Attention as an additional piece of the puzzle.

Attention is graphed using a stacked area chart, which shows how the Attention for each individual site contributes to the total Attention for all sites in the chart. Note that the area for each individual site uses the site below it as a baseline - thus the order of the sites will affect the appearance of the graph.

2. Average Stay

Average Stay is used as an engagement metric. Historically, site engagement was measured exclusively by page views; however, with the introduction of new technologies, such as AJAX and online video, sites are able to reduce the number of clicks a visitor needs to make to obtain the information they are seeking.

Recommendation: Average Stay can be interpreted through different lenses. For instance, a content site like MySpace will strive to keep people on their site as long as possible per visit. In contrast, a search engine like Google will want to help their users find the best results as fast as possible and may consider long Average Stays concerning.

3. Page Views

Page Views is used as an engagement metric. Each time a webpage is accessed by a visitor, it counts as one page view, irrespective of how many times the same user views the same page.

This metric is often used in online advertising, where advertisers use the number of page views a site receives to determine where and how to advertise.

Recommendation: Page Views have historically been considered an important engagement metric. However, because of new technologies such as AJAX and online video that do not require users to view a new page to find content you should also use additional metrics, such as Attention, Average Stay, and Visits Per Person to accurately measure site engagement.

4. Pages Per Visit

Pages Per Visit is used as an engagement metric. Pages are also known as Page Views and represent how many clicks a person makes on a given website.

Recommendation: Pages Per Visit have historically been considered the default engagement metric. However, because of new technologies such as AJAX and online video that do not require users to view a new page to find content you should also use additional metrics, such as Attention and Average Stay, to accurately measure site engagement.

5. Visits Per Person

Visits Per Person is an engagement metric that combines the "Visits" and "Unique Visitors" metric.

Unique Visitors only count a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. A person can make multiple visits to the site in a given month.

Historically, site engagement was measured exclusively by page views; however, with the introduction of new technologies, such as AJAX and online video, sites are able to reduce the number of clicks a visitor needs to make to obtain the information they are seeking.

Since Visits Per Person is not dependent on "Page Views", it is a great way to assess how effective a site is in retaining its visitors.

Growth: Velocity

Velocity is an effective way to measure the impact of planned (or unplanned) events, such as new advertising campaigns, product/service launches or general site growth. Simply choose an event date as the starting point to see how it has affected a site's Attention over time.

Since this metric is derived from time spent on a site, it can be used to assess the quality of traffic generated by the event/campaign.

For instance, Site X could drive up its Unique Visitors by buying a lot of pop-up ads across the Internet. However, most of these people may leave the site immediately. Use Velocity to understand how much more or less time people spent on the site, or their level of engagement. If a site can garner and sustain more of an individual's time it should generally be considered a good thing.