Last week when I talked about web log reports and analysis of them, I thought I had a handle on the topic, but since them I've been bombarded with a term that was new to me. It's behavioral analytics. So I've been trying to find a succinct definition of what exactly the topic is about. And after several searches on Google, Wikipedia and Ask.com I was exasperated to find no single good answer. A bunch of sites and services spouting off about the topic, but no solid definition that I could find.

So the best I can do is surmise that behavioral analytics is tied to trying to predict what a visitor going to be seeking by examining the trends to help find patterns thereby yielding what they want, and thus what you want them to get. WHAT!? Exactly. Give me a break! What's real anymore? I can't tell. If I knew what somebody wanted before they asked for it then we wouldn't need websites, or newspapers, or stores or anything...

-- Mike

I was thinking some more about my Fuzzy Math/Twisted Science post from the other day, and got to thinking that I didn't mean to come across as though there's no value in your web reports. On the other hand completely, you should, but only if you do so with an understanding as to what you're looking at.

So with that in mind, here's my top ten list of important things to understand when you review your traffic. If you want to reference a sample log report, check out Dovetail's Sample Hit Report.

1. Visitor vs. Hit - Everyone wants to know how many hits their site got this month, last month, last year and so on, well I have news for you. Hits don't mean a thing. A hit is just a file - an HTML file, a graphic, a video etc, so if you have 10 graphics on a page, you're going to get at least 11 hits for every view of that page.
    
   You can see how that number quickly gets inflated. So pay attention to your visitor sessions - they are much more meaningful - you can assume that a singe visitor session is a unique person browsing your site for a single period of time - which, based on the site, will cover dozens, hundreds, even thousands of individual hits during their session.
    
2. Page Popularity - Check and see which pages are the most and least visited. This can be useful on any number of counts. You can validate if a traffic driving campaign is effective, or not, if visitors find you through your home page, or other entry point etc. This can help know which pages get the most "eyes" and thus deserve more of your attention in terms of offering up content.
    
3. Entrance and Exit Pages - "Which door do your guests use to enter and exit your house?" My mother used to ask that, which usually meant, make sure the front hall is cleaned best. The same holds true here, not everyone goes straight to your home page - if they come in through a search engine any page is fair game, so understanding where they start is important. Likewise the last page is important too, if it's a "thank  you for buying" page you're doing OK, but if it's a shopping cart page, sales are being left on the counter.
      
4. Referrers - Who's linking to your site. Does someone find you from a search engine, banner ad, or friendly site? This let's you profile traffic before it gets to you so you can understand better how to find your audience.
   
5. Keywords and Search Engines - The Big Kahuna - search engine results! It's one thing to want to be found by a keyword of phrase, and completely another to actually be found by it. Sometimes you've got it all wrong. Sometimes your content isn't supporting your desired words, either way these reports can show what searches were successful at finding your site. This can validate or undermine an SEO or PPC campaign so you can really see how important they are.
    
6. Understanding Geography - The first W in WWW stands for world, but the world starts right outside your own door, so understand where visitors are coming to your site from geographically and understand if you're capturing the right folks. It doesn't do a whole lot of good to receive an inquiry from Queensland, Australia if you're a plumber in Spokane, Washington. BUT BE AWARE: geography is based on IP address, so they can be skewed heavily based on how people connect to the Internet. (Did you know AOL is based in Virginia?)
    
7. Technology - What kind of computers and browsers and operating systems are people using today? It's important because you need to be sure your site works best in the most popular, and conversely if only a small percentage of visits are in one area, you may choose not to spend valuable resources to be compatible - you decide, but either way it's important to know this information.
    
8. Time - We all need more, and never have enough, so it's even that much more critical to know when during the day, week, and month your site is most heavily used as well as how long the average person spends at your site or page.
    
9. Errors - Chances are even the best built sites occasionally experience issues, so knowing how often is important for sure. It's also a good gage to know when your site might be outgrowing its current server or host provider's capabilities.
    
10. Return Visits - Perhaps most import is return traffic. We talked last week about bringing people to your site, if it's working they often come back and this is one way to determine that.

OK, that's it for now, hope you find this useful and as before, if I've forgotten something or you want to weigh in, I encourage you to comment right here at the bottom of this post by clicking the "comments" link.

-- Mike

Last week, I talked about five ways to increase visitor traffic to your website, and one of those items was:

"Pay attention to your traffic. Do you know how many people are even visiting your site? Be sure you know how to find and understand your site's traffic logs. And if you don't know, then find out... "

But here's the thing, there is a lot of useful information buried in your web stats, but most people just don't understand how to interpret them properly. I've said for years that too many people apply "fuzzy math" to their hit reports, that the promise of web analytics is a "twisted science." Why?  Because simply put, too often gathering analytics is about impressing the boss, and not making sound business decisions.

So, don't make the same mistake, take the time to understand what your hits are telling you in context with what you really want to know. A million hits to one site can mean something completely different to another; and a million hits don't mean a thing if you can't correlate them to some other useful metric - like say sales!

-- Mike

If you read my post from earlier this week, then you may have been saying to yourself "OK, Mike, I got it, but now get off your high horse and tell me what I can practically do!" OK, I will, because you're right in a way, not making the time to update your website is usually just a symptom of the real issue. And what we have found is that people just don't know where to start. So I like to suggest that they start with some simple starting ideas.

The following are thoughts anyone can use to achieve some outstanding results with a web site.

1. Know thy visitor! I can't underscore this one enough, understanding your audience is the basis on which everything you do with your site should be based. Take the time to understand who is coming to your site and who you want to come to your site. Are you trying to attract prospects, customers, partners, dealers, prospective employees, clowns and elephants, etc. Whatever the answer [and yes it's OK to have several] then be sure you have areas of your site to talk directly to each of them.
    
2. Give them a reason to come back. Providing solid, predictable and valuable content on a regular basis is a great way to keep your site fresh and attract returning visitors. Publish news and announcements, update events you'll be hosting or attending, post to a blog, record a podcast, publish a newsletter, create a resource directory, offer a valued link library, host an industry research area, and so on. The ideas are endless, and so can be the value to your target visitor.
      
3. Have a clearly defined call to action. When someone visits your site, any page of your site, do they clearly understand what you want them to do to take the next step? Should they pick up the phone and call you, fill out a contact form, email for information, buy something, link to another site, whatever the purpose, make it clear and easy.
    
4. Small, regular changes are better than infrequent, drastic ones. Don't wait until you have enough updates to bother. If you think it, do it! The quicker your ideas are translated into reality, the sharper, more interesting and better they will be executed. If I asked you how often you were going to update your site and you said "a few times a year," or "once a quarter," or even "once a month" - I'd probably reply with - "don't bother!" Seriously, don't get overwhelmed by the prospect. To quote Michael Jordan and Nike - "Just Do It!" - and do it regularly.
    
5. Pay attention to your traffic. Do you know how many people are even visiting your site. Be sure you know how to find and understand your site's traffic logs. And if you don't know, then find out, and if you don't have them, change host providers. Plain and simple, traffic trends can help you to appreciate which areas of your site are working and which are less then favorites.

And finally, understand the simple fact that your website is never done! It's not like a brochure or commercial or any other media around, because you always want to be changing it, adding to it and making it better. So try thinking in these terms, let me know what you think and how it works, and share your experiences by commenting right here on this post.

-- Mike

It's amazing how often I walk into a company and hear that "my website doesn't work, has never worked, was done years ago and hasn't generated a thing for me!" And it's always followed by - "but, this time it'll be different!"

In a situation like that it's with a little trepidation that I begin to speak, because there are many excuses as to why a website doesn't generate business, but more often than not there's one real reason. Them! Plain and simple, it's not a priority, - they put it up and like a brochure leave it to get dusty on the shelf.

If a company isn't able to devote the attention and time to a website to make it a living, breathing, dynamic version of the real-world company, then why would it work? And nobody wants to hear that they may be part of the problem. So, how do I come back from this scenario? Dig. Dig deep to understand what the obstacles are that prevent the site from being a priority, and give them the tools so that they can make time and not excuses.

-- Mike

From time to time someone asks what's going on this quarter with the hosting environment.  It is a great question and we are so busy we don't always stop to announce what we're doing!  So I thought I'd take a minute to post this list of strategic projects already underway...

Current Dovetail Internet Technologies Hosting Initiatives:

• Extending secure off-site storage practices.
  • New arrangements for data archiving and storage will enable us to extend the benefits of off-site storage.
    
• Increasing the capabilities of the core network infrastructure to gigabit bandwidth capacity.
  • Replacement of the core network with higher capacity switches will enhance performance and increase internal traffic speed.
    
• Continued improvements to resource management tool sets.
  • Many tasks performed manually by our staff will be automated such as user reports, domain reports, disk usage, etc.
    
• Increasing backup capacity.  
  • Having complete the implementation of a gigabit SAN we will be adding more backup drives with higher capacity, updating the backup software and replacing the backup servers.
    

Have a wonderful day!

--Mark

When you look at the version number on your favorite software you might ask why all the numbers?!

At dovetail we split up our numbers and give marketing control of the first 2.  So novo version 5.2 is what we will advertise and talk about when discussing features.  The rest of the numbers are for technical support and link back to a tracking system that we use to manage the source code.  These numbers are referred to as the "sub" version numbers.  In the case of novo 5.2.145 the 145 relates to the "revision" number in our subversion system.  That allows us to know exactly what version of every program file was used to make that release and therefore allows us to support that specific version.

I won't get into the 4th digit but suffice it to say that one means something to the programmers too!

Have a wonderful day!

--Mark

We have completed the renewal and installation of the SSL certificate for webmail.dovetailinternet.com. 

You should no longer receive a warning message when logging into the email web portal.

Thank you for your patience and your feedback is always welcome.

Posted: 2:01:24 PM EST

We are currently working to resolve an expired SSL certificate for webmail.dovetailinternet.com

If you are logging into the web based email portal to retrieve your email you may receive an error "There is a problem with this website's security certificate."  This is caused by the SSL certificate being expired.  The data is still being encrypted however the expired date will cause most browsers to display the warning.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and are working to resolve that. 

We currently expect this to resolved within an hour.

Posted 11:01:18 AM (EST)