Seven Deadly Web Analytics Sins    1    2    3    4    5    6    7

By John Marshall

Deadly Web Analytics Sin #5: Trends Over Time
The fact of the matter is that no matter how smart and savvy you are, you can't just look at a certain value and know if it's good, bad or indifferent. The numbers that indicate success for your site may be the kiss of death for someone else's site. Think about it. If you sell a high-end luxury product online, your conversion percent may be miniscule (.5%) while your time spent on the site may be through the roof (18 minutes). The same numbers that spell success for you would spell lean times (and something very wrong) for a site that sells $5 widgets.

More important than absolute numbers are the differences in absolute numbers. As those numbers rise and fall, they create trends, and it's the trends—not the absolute numbers—that hold the key to better understanding how your web site is performing.

When Divine Intervention is Not an Option
The biggest factor that influences whether your site improves is your ability to refine and improve your online presence. But don't let the 'trends' fool you into thinking that you can control user behavior—that when the line goes up you're doing well, and when it goes down you're not. Sadly, the line for most metrics moves up and down seemingly at random. Your site is subject to huge external forces that make the graphs move around erratically.

The fact is, if you have a web site, your basic visitor stats are likely to trend up and to the right, no matter what you do. Internet usage grows and inevitably, your site grows with it. What you can't tell, of course, is how much better you could've done if you'd taken action to improve the site, campaigns, usability etc. Making such improvements usually results in a noticeable jump in stats, rather than a trend.

So, Are Any Trends are Worth Tracking?
While web analytics software makes it easy to view certain trends—the number of visitors who came to the site within a certain time period—we've found that sort of data, while interesting, rarely useful. Why?

1. Real world events: Time intervals chosen by the software don't line up with "real world" events. Analyzing the past month of data gives you an idea of how things have been going for the past thirty days, but doesn't take into consideration the e-mail campaign that was sent mid-month or the site redesign that occurred 60 days ago.
2. Activity disconnect: The software shows numbers, but not necessarily the activities that led to those numbers. If your site experiences a large spike in traffic (due to being featured on a popular blog) or a decrease in visitors (due to technical difficulties on the part of one of your largest affiliates) the software can only show you the absolute numbers—not the reasons why it occurred.
3. Line graph limitations: Something that's a big deal in a conversion rate (a jump from 2.07% to 2.16%) can't be accurately depicted as a line graph on a computer screen. These sorts of subtle, yet important changes need to be expressed as numbers in order to have meaning and allow you to take appropriate action.

To reiterate: A monthly visitor report doesn't take into account the activities that occurred during that month that potentially had an impact on the numbers. Simply viewing the month data by day can also be misleading—because of the way traffic trails off at the weekend (or rises, for B2C sites).

WWJD (What Would John Do?)
A more accurate way to gauge trends over time is to take control of the time periods your software is comparing. Instead of letting the software prescribe a 30-day or 6-month time period, set your own custom dates based on events and activities occurring as part of your marketing plan. For example: If you did a large direct mail campaign on the 18th of June, compare the twenty days before June 18th with the twenty days after. This will give you an idea of the success (or failure) of your efforts in a way that a pre-canned trend could never accurately convey.

In closing, the best way to determine improvements in ROI, unique visitors or any other of your key metrics is to label two adjacent time periods—one before a new event or initiative is launched, and one after. By doing this, you'll be able to weed out any 'wild-goose-chase' trends and focus on whether tangible improvements are taking place.

Seven Deadly Web Analytics Sins    1    2    3    4    5    6    7