Understanding Web traffic can be maddening. It’s easy to find out, in general, how many visitors your site’s had, which pages visitors accessed, and even where most of the site traffic came from with just about any logging software.
Yet most only deliver averages, which are only useful to a certain extent. More advanced analysis software uses pie charts and graphs to attempt to explain what’s going on, and while these are often helpful in pointing out trends, they fall short when attempting to explain how specific groups of users experience your site. Generalities are better than nothing, but specifics are the key to improving the flow of traffic and, most importantly, improving sales.
Enter ClickTracks, a small company in Northern California that’s been turning the tables on Web analytics software for the past two years. Their newest release, ClickTracks Professional 4.0 (available to the public after July 23rd), attempts to serve up the specific information that Web masters need to tune their sites and advertising campaigns to insure the most advantageous use of precious advertising dollars. ClickTracks is Web analytics with a twist – instead of designing software for number crunchers, ClickTracks attempts to make even advanced statistics meaningful and easy to understand for non-technical marketing and sales staff.
Are they successful? I was recently invited to a sneak preview of ClickTracks 4.0 Professional and I must admit I was impressed.
The best way to explore ClickTracks is through its four major areas of reporting. These are the navigation, search engine, site summary and campaign reports.
The Navigation Report
This feature allows Web masters to see, right on the Web page itself, how traffic moves through the site. It’s possible to see not only how many visitors visit a page, but how long they stay, how many leave after seeing that particular page, plus where they entered from and where they go next. Small bar graphs explain this information in terms that are easy to grasp in a quick glance, right on the page where the activity occurred.
For visually oriented individuals, this report should prove very helpful. Log files that present the user with long lists of URLs sometimes lose their meaning, especially in a very large site, especially for individuals who have not memorized what each page looks like and its corresponding file name.
Figure 1 – The Navigation Report (click for a larger image)
The Search Engine Report
The search engine reporting feature shows the dollar amount of conversions garnered from the user defined search engine. Drilling down, ClickTracks users have the ability to see the dollar amount of conversions produced from specific keywords used on certain search engines, and how much time visitors who were attracted by specific keywords spent on the site.
Essentially, if visitors are delivered to the site via search engines, it’s possible to find out just about anything regarding their habits on the site. Did they buy anything? Did they click away immediately? This feature offers a staggering amount of information. It’s almost overwhelming, but it’s an excellent tool to determine which search engine strategies are working and which are not.
Figure 2 – The Search Engine Report (click for a larger image)
Site Summary Report
The site summary report makes it possible to follow the paths of various user-defined groups (paying visitors, non-paying visitors, visitors from Google, etc.) exactly as those individuals moved through the site. It’s also easy to track trends from here, such as pages where a large number of visitors exit, or pages that seem to lead more frequently to sales. This is a very handy tool for tracking behavior trends and discovering how certain groups interact with the site.
Figure 3 – The Site Summary Report (click for a larger image)
Campaign Report
This is a brand new feature for ClickTracks and it too offers a staggering amount of information. For e-business professionals trying to monitor multiple keyword campaigns on multiple search engines, it truly brings order from chaos. The campaign report allows users to log into their Google or Overture accounts and view their individual campaigns combined with traffic data right on the same screen. Is one campaign gathering more clicks but fewer sales than another? The trends will be made clear through this report.
Figure 4 – The Campaign Report (click for a larger image)
Summary
ClickTracks is definitely a unique tool in its class. If you’re accustomed to site management tools that offer graphical presentations of data, you will be disappointed here. There are no pie charts to be found in ClickTracks, no bell curves. I believe this is intentional – the idea of this program is not to chart generalities, but instead to look for specific trends. ClickTracks is not intended for statistics majors – it’s geared toward people who are visual, yet require useful marketing information. It is a true e-commerce tool.
ClickTracks is an excellent tool for watching how people interact with a Web site. I believe it will prove useful not only to sales staff but also useful to Web designers – it helps to spotlight which pages are not working, where potential dead-ends occur, and even can suggest inappropriate referring sites or poorly worded ads that promise something the landing page does not deliver.
Some novices may feel intimidated at first by vast number of options. I have not installed and configured ClickTracks myself, but it seems that there is quite a bit of customization that must happen before it reveals the intricate secrets of a site. Some reports involve simply importing a file, but there is definitely some work involved before the complex statistics just appear on the screen. Considering the potential savings on lost sales, however, ClickTracks 4.0 Professional appears to be a wise place to invest a little time and effort.
Jackie Rosenberger is an editor with murdok
