Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: tech stuff. Listener Wrath wanted me to do a show
Speaker 1: about web analytics, and specifically about web analytics and your
Speaker 1: personal data. Your data being the general you out there,
Speaker 1: like how much of your personal data gets wrapped up
Speaker 1: in web analytics. This is actually a really big topic,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to take a couple of episodes to
Speaker 1: cover it, and this first one we're gonna talk just
Speaker 1: about web analytics, what they are, why they are necessary
Speaker 1: in the web that we know and love today, And
Speaker 1: in the next episode, I'll go more into detail about
Speaker 1: the sort of data that they can gather are about you.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot to consider. Some of it gets
Speaker 1: a little technical, but we're gonna go light on that.
Speaker 1: Will will explain what the technical aspects are, but we
Speaker 1: won't get too bogged down because it would involve talking
Speaker 1: about lines of code and that would get pretty awkward
Speaker 1: without visual aids. Uh. A lot of this can get
Speaker 1: a little scary because web analytics are valuable, and they
Speaker 1: really do chip away at your privacy. But let's start
Speaker 1: from the top. What are web analytics. Well, at their
Speaker 1: most basic level, web analytics would be a collection of
Speaker 1: tools and strategies that allow people to collect and measure
Speaker 1: Internet data, specifically user generated Internet data, typically as a
Speaker 1: way to understand user behavior, and that is done so
Speaker 1: that the website owner can optimize experiences and leverage that
Speaker 1: user behavior in some way that ultimately corresponds to making money.
Speaker 1: If I'm gonna be and entirely honest about this, it's
Speaker 1: all about figuring out how to make the most compelling
Speaker 1: experience to maximize the most return on an investment, that
Speaker 1: investment being the time, money, and effort you put in
Speaker 1: to creating a website. So this is not necessarily the
Speaker 1: owner of the website and might be the advertising company
Speaker 1: that brokers deals with various companies to place ads on websites.
Speaker 1: But somewhere there's a person who's analyzing, or more likely
Speaker 1: a system that's analyzing this information in an effort to
Speaker 1: maximize that return. Now, in many ways, this is kind
Speaker 1: of following a long tradition that's been effective in meat space,
Speaker 1: you know, in the real world. If you go to
Speaker 1: a brick and mortar shop regularly, you've probably noticed that
Speaker 1: sometimes stuff gets moved around the shop might reorganize. Most
Speaker 1: of the time, this is because the shop owners are
Speaker 1: trying to change things up in order to encourage more purchases.
Speaker 1: So grocery stores are a great example of this. The
Speaker 1: layout of your basic supermarket in the United States tends
Speaker 1: to be fairly standard. No matter what type of store
Speaker 1: you go to. It could be a Kroger or a Wegman's,
Speaker 1: or a Whole Foods or a Piggy Wiggly or a
Speaker 1: safe Way or whatever, they all tend to have a
Speaker 1: similar layout. So you walk in, you probably will see
Speaker 1: flowers very frequently grocery stores and supermarkets. While flowers near
Speaker 1: the entrance, this sets a pleasant scene. It reminds people
Speaker 1: of freshness, bright colors. Behind that you typically find the
Speaker 1: produce that contains fruits and vegetables and vibrant colors, and
Speaker 1: that again engages your senses. It makes you think of
Speaker 1: the food is being fresh. Over in the bakery section,
Speaker 1: you've got an area which typically creates a lot of
Speaker 1: very pleasing smells that will often make you feel hungry.
Speaker 1: That means that when you're hung greet you you tend
Speaker 1: to buy more than what you need. Right. So, if
Speaker 1: you've ever had this experience, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: You go into the grocery store, you've got a list,
Speaker 1: You've got three things on your list, You walk by
Speaker 1: that bakery. Next thing you know, you're in the checkoutline
Speaker 1: with eight things in your cart. Instad of the three
Speaker 1: things that you had planned. Happens to the best of us,
Speaker 1: and it happens by design, by the design of the
Speaker 1: grocery stores. They people figure this out. They said, well,
Speaker 1: let's put this here because we'll make more sales. This
Speaker 1: has all been studied, by the way. I'm not just
Speaker 1: spit balling here. This is why grocery stores are laid
Speaker 1: out the way they are. Uh. You also see this
Speaker 1: in various types of box stores where the big ticket,
Speaker 1: very popular items, maybe very far from the entrance that
Speaker 1: requires you to walk through the rest of the store
Speaker 1: in order to take a look at those things. These
Speaker 1: areas that have a high interest level, and the hope
Speaker 1: is that along the way you'll see something else that
Speaker 1: catches your eye and you'll pick that up. To Now,
Speaker 1: stores will experiment with where certain products should sit on shelves.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you might display one product a shelf higher than
Speaker 1: what it was on before, and that's all it will
Speaker 1: take to move more units. Large chains might use certain
Speaker 1: stores as test sites and they'll work on a new
Speaker 1: layout configuration on this test site to see how well
Speaker 1: it plays out in that market before they make a
Speaker 1: decision about whether or not they'll roll it out to
Speaker 1: everybody else. This is essentially what we call a B testing.
Speaker 1: So a B testing is something that you see in
Speaker 1: website design where you've got someone creating a website layout
Speaker 1: typically and they deploy that layout so that some users
Speaker 1: when they come to visit the site, see version A
Speaker 1: of a website. Some users see version B, and then
Speaker 1: they analyze the behaviors of users on A versus B
Speaker 1: and see if there is a measurable difference in behaviors
Speaker 1: so that you can determine well, it turns out that
Speaker 1: version A people are not sticking around very long, the
Speaker 1: version B people are engaged much more with the content
Speaker 1: of the website. So this is a way of testing
Speaker 1: out different approaches, different design layouts in order to determine
Speaker 1: what is the most effective one. And it's the same
Speaker 1: thing that we see in the real world. Uh, they
Speaker 1: scrutinize web ALEXA is scrutinized Internet user behavior to get
Speaker 1: a deeper understanding of what people want and what they
Speaker 1: like so that website designers and advertisers can tweak their
Speaker 1: approaches to tap into that and get the best result.
Speaker 1: That result might be to get people to subscribe to
Speaker 1: a service, to purchase products, to support a nonprofit, or
Speaker 1: just spend more time on the web page. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about how this might play out using actual web
Speaker 1: pages as an example. And I'm going to use how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com as an example because I used
Speaker 1: to write articles for that site and I was in
Speaker 1: meetings where we were talking about site design and what
Speaker 1: was in iportant and the elements that we're going to
Speaker 1: go into play and how that was going to change things.
Speaker 1: And so I've seen a lot about the ways that
Speaker 1: people will analyze traffic data and try to use that
Speaker 1: to help guide decisions for form and content. So How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, like many websites, generates revenue from ads placed
Speaker 1: on the page. This is at the very heart of
Speaker 1: why web analytics are so important. It's because of the
Speaker 1: revenue model for making money on the web. The very
Speaker 1: hard and soul of that is web advertising. So ads
Speaker 1: can be based on a per click basis. That means
Speaker 1: the advertiser only pays the web page for the actual
Speaker 1: number of clicks the ads generate. So if the ads
Speaker 1: do not get many clicks, the web page does not
Speaker 1: make very much money. There are other variations of this,
Speaker 1: but it's a general approach. There are things that you
Speaker 1: can do to help engage more clicks. The positioning of
Speaker 1: the ad on the web page but comes really important.
Speaker 1: But the other important element is making sure the ads
Speaker 1: actually appealed to the site's users. If you have a
Speaker 1: fan page set up for a cartoon show, for example,
Speaker 1: and you show ads that are for a professional video
Speaker 1: conferencing service for medium to big businesses, that might not
Speaker 1: get very many clicks because the ads that you're displaying
Speaker 1: don't necessarily appeal to the audience coming to your website. Now,
Speaker 1: the other approach besides this per click basis is to
Speaker 1: have a fixed rate ad. Now, these ads have a
Speaker 1: set rate, as I just mentioned, and typically that is
Speaker 1: defined as per impressions or page views. So if you
Speaker 1: hear people talk about impressions, they're really talking about how
Speaker 1: many times has a device loaded that page. That is
Speaker 1: an impression. The more page views a site gets, the
Speaker 1: more money it will make off the ads that are
Speaker 1: on those pages. And typically we measure this in the
Speaker 1: thousands using the unit CPS. That's cost per meal meal
Speaker 1: being one thousand m I L l E. So it's
Speaker 1: not one million, it's one thousand. So if a website
Speaker 1: charges advertisers or rate of two dollars CPM, that means
Speaker 1: the advertiser will pay the publisher two dollars for every
Speaker 1: one thousand impressions or page views that page generates that
Speaker 1: has the ad on it. Right, So the ideas that well,
Speaker 1: we've we've shown that this page has been loaded one
Speaker 1: thousand times. Uh, that means your ad has been viewed
Speaker 1: one thousand times on on various devices, not necessarily by
Speaker 1: one thousand people, because if you have a website that
Speaker 1: reloads frequently for some reason or another, then those uh,
Speaker 1: those impressions could represent fewer than a thousand people, but
Speaker 1: it would still be one thousand impressions you would get
Speaker 1: the two dollars. Page Views and people are two very
Speaker 1: different things. If you can rack up a large number
Speaker 1: of page views with a limited number of people, that
Speaker 1: still counts towards CPM. And this is why so many
Speaker 1: web pages have things like quizzes or image galleries or
Speaker 1: slide shows. Each time the page refreshes to give you
Speaker 1: a new question or a new hilarious cat meme, that's
Speaker 1: an impression. That's a page view. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: gone to an article where it's not really an article,
Speaker 1: it's a slide show and you have to click next
Speaker 1: after each thing. This is largely why because it's a
Speaker 1: way to engage the user to keep on clicking through
Speaker 1: and refreshing the page, and it's a way to generate
Speaker 1: those impressions. And the math is simple. Why would you
Speaker 1: create a web page with the top twenty comedy movies
Speaker 1: of all time and you put it all on one
Speaker 1: page so you get one impression per visitor when they
Speaker 1: come in to read your article. Or you could do
Speaker 1: the smart thing, you create a slide show, and you
Speaker 1: could potentially get twenty page views per visitor. Now, not
Speaker 1: every visitor is going to stick around for all twenty items,
Speaker 1: but even if they only show up and bounce, like
Speaker 1: they see the first page and they see, oh, this
Speaker 1: is a slide show, I don't want to use this,
Speaker 1: and they go away, You're not gonna get fewer impressions
Speaker 1: than if they were all on the same page. Right.
Speaker 1: If you attract ten thou people, let's say, to your
Speaker 1: one page version of the top twenty movies comedy movies
Speaker 1: of all time, and they read the whole thing, that's great.
Speaker 1: If you attract ten thousand to your slide show and
Speaker 1: eight thousand of them just look at that first page
Speaker 1: and they leave, but the other two thousand start clicking
Speaker 1: at least a little bit, You've generated more than ten
Speaker 1: thousand impressions. So it is a strategy that works, which
Speaker 1: is why you see it out there now. I am
Speaker 1: not a huge fan of that particular type of web
Speaker 1: design from a user perspective, but from a business perspective,
Speaker 1: I totally get it. It's a page view manufacturing machine,
Speaker 1: and if the industry depends upon page views as a
Speaker 1: way of measuring engagement and therefore tied to revenue, then
Speaker 1: finding ways to maximize page views is always going to
Speaker 1: be a priority. It's not necessarily the quality of the interaction,
Speaker 1: but the quantity the number of impressions. However, quality can
Speaker 1: matter too, and that's because websites have to first figure
Speaker 1: out how much do they charge for those CPMs. You know,
Speaker 1: I gave that two dollar figure, but that was just
Speaker 1: a random example. A site that can demonstrate that its
Speaker 1: users feel they're getting a really good quality experience can
Speaker 1: typically demand much higher rates than other sites. If you
Speaker 1: have a lot of traffic coming to your website, and
Speaker 1: you can also demonstrate that the people who come to
Speaker 1: your website are really engaged, they really stick around. They
Speaker 1: often will explore the website or stay on pages for
Speaker 1: a very long time. That shows that you have a
Speaker 1: higher value you then a website that might get a
Speaker 1: lot of people coming in, but then immediately they leave.
Speaker 1: So this ties into a concept called bounce rate I
Speaker 1: mentioned bounce earlier. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of
Speaker 1: website visitors who leave or bounce after viewing just one page,
Speaker 1: like a landing page or a home page. You want
Speaker 1: your bounce rate to be really low because you want
Speaker 1: visitors to be engaged in your site. You want them
Speaker 1: to not just come to the landing page, but maybe
Speaker 1: click on some of the links that go to other
Speaker 1: pages in your website, and it shows that your site
Speaker 1: has value. Plus, chances are you want people engage because
Speaker 1: you put a lot of work into a website, and
Speaker 1: it would be depressing if no one ever went beyond
Speaker 1: a single page view. You know, why would you go
Speaker 1: through the trouble of designing a fully engrossing website when
Speaker 1: everyone just comes to one page on that site and
Speaker 1: then they say, no, I'm out of here. That would
Speaker 1: be really upsetting. And so a low bounce rate tends
Speaker 1: to look really good to advertise. There's this is a
Speaker 1: signal that says users value their time here, and so
Speaker 1: you're advertising will be featured on a really good website.
Speaker 1: And again, another important quantity to measure is the amount
Speaker 1: of time people will spend on a web page. Do
Speaker 1: you want that number to be high so you want
Speaker 1: the bounce right to be low. The amount of time
Speaker 1: spent on a web page to be high. That shows
Speaker 1: people are spending more time on your service. That's attractive
Speaker 1: to advertisers. It's a great way to demand higher CPM
Speaker 1: rates if you can demonstrate that users come to your
Speaker 1: site and spend a lot of time there. For one
Speaker 1: thing that tells advertisers your site is a good spot
Speaker 1: to reach people. If the time spent on your pages
Speaker 1: is low. That might tell advertisers, hey, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: don't put ads here because no one is spending enough
Speaker 1: time on an individual page to even register that there
Speaker 1: is an ad. If the average time spent on a
Speaker 1: page on your site is half a minute or less
Speaker 1: and you have lots of long articles, that indicates that
Speaker 1: most users aren't actually reading the content you've created, and
Speaker 1: that is not a good thing. So you want your
Speaker 1: once right low. You want the amount of time you
Speaker 1: spent spent on an individual page on your site to
Speaker 1: be high, and that will keep advertisers interested in your
Speaker 1: site as a place where ads may be most effective.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, knowing that your users like one thing over
Speaker 1: another in general is really helpful because it can help
Speaker 1: you match up advertisers that are most appropriate for your demographic. Again,
Speaker 1: let's going back to that fictional fan page I talked
Speaker 1: about creating a fan site for a cartoon show. Let's
Speaker 1: say you've done that and you've got great engagement, You've
Speaker 1: got a really low bounce rate. People are spending a
Speaker 1: good amount of time on your page and they're exploring
Speaker 1: the various links on there. Then maybe you reach out
Speaker 1: and you find an online store that sells merchandise related
Speaker 1: to the show that your site is a fan site of.
Speaker 1: That's a no brainer. That's a perfect relationship, and you
Speaker 1: could probably demand decent CPMs for that, and ideally everyone benefits.
Speaker 1: The advertiser gets a good spot to show ads, visitors
Speaker 1: to the website have the opportunity to purchase merchandise related
Speaker 1: to the show they love, you earn money from the impressions.
Speaker 1: That's the idea. So generally speaking, it's not the worst
Speaker 1: thing in the world, right this web analytics. It's the
Speaker 1: idea of not just the advertising part, although that plays
Speaker 1: a big part of this, but also what do my
Speaker 1: users like? And how can I make my website more
Speaker 1: of what my users like? How can I get rid
Speaker 1: of stuff they don't like? How can I emphasize stuff
Speaker 1: they do like and make a better experience so that
Speaker 1: the work I put in is rewarded and I feel
Speaker 1: good about what I've done, right, Like, I feel a
Speaker 1: sense of accomplishment because I've created something that people value. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's a very powerful feeling. Now, I got a lot
Speaker 1: more to say about web analytics, but before I get
Speaker 1: into any more of that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Right to actually measure stuff like
Speaker 1: bounce rate, time spent on pages, user preferences. We rely
Speaker 1: on web analytics, and there are companies that specialize in
Speaker 1: providing web analytics tools. Google is one of the big ones. Uh.
Speaker 1: These services provide a ton of information to website owners
Speaker 1: to help them keep an eye on how things are
Speaker 1: going and how to react nimbly when an opportunity or
Speaker 1: a crisis arises. The web analysis depends not only on tools,
Speaker 1: but also some assumptions, and one of those assumptions is intent.
Speaker 1: When you look at an analysis, you are assuming that
Speaker 1: the behavior you're studying was intentional. So let's say again,
Speaker 1: let's let's start with how stuffworks dot com. That site
Speaker 1: has a lot of individual pages, hundreds hundreds of pages.
Speaker 1: There are thousands of articles about all sorts of different subjects,
Speaker 1: from technology to culture, to finance, everything else. There's a
Speaker 1: home page which features links to new articles. There's probably
Speaker 1: older articles up there that are maybe timely because of
Speaker 1: something that's going on in the news, or maybe there's
Speaker 1: some classic articles that are mixed in because they've consistently
Speaker 1: performed well over time, so they're they're dependable whatever the case.
Speaker 1: There are several links on the homepage that go directly
Speaker 1: to articles, so you click on that and you're in
Speaker 1: an article. There are also links that go to channel pages.
Speaker 1: These are broader categories of topics like computers or electronics,
Speaker 1: so you can click on that and go to the
Speaker 1: homepage for that channel. And then there's also a search
Speaker 1: engine tool so that you can actually search for articles
Speaker 1: about a specific topic. If there's something you have in mind. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're analyzing web traffic across the site, you want
Speaker 1: to take close look at all the behavior. You want
Speaker 1: to see how many people clicked into an article from
Speaker 1: the homepage versus going through a channel link, like something
Speaker 1: that was linked through going through one of those channel
Speaker 1: landing pages or using a search engine. You want to
Speaker 1: see how many people clicked into an article from an
Speaker 1: external search engine, or maybe a piece of content somewhere
Speaker 1: else on the web, something that's not on one of
Speaker 1: your web pages but is linked from someone else's to
Speaker 1: your site, or from a social media platform. There might
Speaker 1: be social media marketing campaigns that you're running, and you
Speaker 1: want to include a little string of data that will
Speaker 1: let you know if someone's clicking into that article from
Speaker 1: say Twitter or Facebook. All of that is valuable information
Speaker 1: and it helps you figure out how were your well
Speaker 1: your design works. So if most of your traffic is
Speaker 1: coming in through search, it means you perform well when
Speaker 1: people search stuff in in engines like Google. Like they're
Speaker 1: looking for a topic in Google and your site is
Speaker 1: popping up. That's great, Hey, you've got great seo. Your
Speaker 1: website is is up in the first few uh selections
Speaker 1: in a search engine. And we know from research that
Speaker 1: if you are on the first page, you have a
Speaker 1: lot better chance of having someone click on your length
Speaker 1: than if you're buried down on page three or lower. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't go past the second page
Speaker 1: if they don't see what they're looking for. But if
Speaker 1: that's the case, if most of your traffic is coming
Speaker 1: in through search, that might indicate that your homepage is
Speaker 1: not really a popular spot for people to visit just
Speaker 1: on their own. So that might mean you should look
Speaker 1: into a redesign for your homepage to attract more visitors
Speaker 1: to say, this is a website you want to check regularly,
Speaker 1: not just come here when you are searching for something,
Speaker 1: and we happen to have what it is you're searching for.
Speaker 1: But no matter what conclusions you draw from this data,
Speaker 1: you're doing it based on the assumption that the users
Speaker 1: intended to navigate to those links, Whether they did so
Speaker 1: through a search engine, a link on another site, or
Speaker 1: through the home page. Your analysis depends upon that assumption.
Speaker 1: So if people ended up on your site by chance,
Speaker 1: by mistake, that doesn't tell you anything other than there
Speaker 1: may be links to your site that are misleading or
Speaker 1: easy to click on by accident. Um. I'm reminded of
Speaker 1: a lot of older web advertisements that were pop over
Speaker 1: ads that would suddenly show up in front of your
Speaker 1: view on a website, and it was very easy to
Speaker 1: accidentally click on one while you were looking at a website,
Speaker 1: because it would pop up just as you were about
Speaker 1: to click on something else, and you would navigate to
Speaker 1: whatever the ad linked you to. Well, that's not an
Speaker 1: intentional click. That's that's like a shell game. It's smoke
Speaker 1: and mirrors. It's it's tricking you, scamming you into clicking,
Speaker 1: not to fool you or not to convince you to
Speaker 1: buy anything, but because that makes it look really good
Speaker 1: to your clients. Right, if you are a company that
Speaker 1: that places ads on stuff and you can turn to
Speaker 1: a potential client and say, here's the number of clicks
Speaker 1: that are last campaign generated. Look how how popular it was,
Speaker 1: and you just leave out the little detail that most
Speaker 1: of those clicks were gathered by subterviews. Then you might
Speaker 1: be able to land the juicy contract. It's not very ethical,
Speaker 1: but it did happen quite a bit. Doesn't happen so
Speaker 1: much in that format anymore. I'm sure it happens like
Speaker 1: crazy and other formats still, So accidental traffic might count
Speaker 1: the same as intentional when you're looking at number of impressions,
Speaker 1: but it's not exactly a healthy business strategy because your
Speaker 1: bounce rate is going to be super high, your time
Speaker 1: spent on a website it's gonna be super low. That
Speaker 1: people are going to associate the destination they went to
Speaker 1: as an untrustworthy source, So it is a losing game
Speaker 1: in the long run. So intention is a very important
Speaker 1: concept in web analysis, particularly when you pair that concept
Speaker 1: with other behaviors. So if you see a lot of
Speaker 1: people are clicking into an article from the home page
Speaker 1: of how Stuff Works, but then you see the bounce
Speaker 1: rate on the article is very high, and the time
Speaker 1: spent on the article is very low. It indicates that
Speaker 1: what you've got it that link is not meeting the
Speaker 1: expectation of visitors. Right they see a headline, they click
Speaker 1: on it, they immediately back out or navigate away. That
Speaker 1: tells you something is going wrong there. Either the article
Speaker 1: is not a very good one, or the link was misleading.
Speaker 1: Maybe the headline wasn't really appropriate for whatever the article was,
Speaker 1: or maybe it gave mistaken impression that the content was
Speaker 1: going to be in some other factor form factor like
Speaker 1: video or audio. Uh So, if you if you work
Speaker 1: from the assumption that the user intended to click on
Speaker 1: the link and then went to the new page, but
Speaker 1: they didn't like what they saw, it tells you, well,
Speaker 1: I need to fix this. Maybe I need to change
Speaker 1: that headline, or maybe I need to uh make more
Speaker 1: clear what it is this is so that people don't
Speaker 1: click on it and then just bounce away because that
Speaker 1: doesn't look good either. So, using a different example, let's
Speaker 1: say I'm looking at data from how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and I have an article there titled will Artificial
Speaker 1: Intelligence Eliminate Your job? Right there on the home page,
Speaker 1: And I'm looking at the traffic and I see a
Speaker 1: lot of people are clicking on that link, but once
Speaker 1: they get there, they either search for something in the
Speaker 1: search engine or they back out the article. Now, that
Speaker 1: could mean the users are not seeing what they expected
Speaker 1: and the article title maybe isn't appropriate. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if I see the bounce rate is low and the
Speaker 1: time spent on the page is a good amount, I
Speaker 1: can assume this is an article that's really engaging and interesting,
Speaker 1: and I might want to give it an even more
Speaker 1: prominent placement on the home page to help drive more traffic.
Speaker 1: If I see this is performing really well, let me
Speaker 1: put it on the heroes spot on a carousel so
Speaker 1: that it's the first thing people see when they load
Speaker 1: up the home page and drive even more traffic to it.
Speaker 1: Or I might want to make sure that I include
Speaker 1: the article in the layout the following day. Right, So
Speaker 1: if I have a carousel or slide show type display
Speaker 1: for articles, I might say, all right, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna put it in the first spot because now it's
Speaker 1: a day old, but I will put it in spot
Speaker 1: two or three because there's still a good amount of
Speaker 1: traffic coming into this article. There's a tail to it.
Speaker 1: That's what we call the long tail, where you create
Speaker 1: content that continues to have relevance after you've posted it.
Speaker 1: Or maybe a visitor clicks on the homepage and then
Speaker 1: types in the search engine Turing test because they've been
Speaker 1: inspired by this AI article title, but they're more interested
Speaker 1: in learning about Alan Turing's proposed intelligence test, not about
Speaker 1: whether or not AI is going to take their job.
Speaker 1: And because they use the search engine, I might conclude
Speaker 1: that my homepage doesn't have great navigational tools that will
Speaker 1: lead users to content they want to see. If I
Speaker 1: did have really good navigational tools, then maybe the user
Speaker 1: would see three or four articles that he or she
Speaker 1: is interested in within that same subject. You know, they
Speaker 1: click on a link that would take them to artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence topics, and they might read several articles, and that's
Speaker 1: going to benefit both the user and me. A search
Speaker 1: result will pull up one article, presumably the the article
Speaker 1: that's most relevant to the search terms. Navigation will offer
Speaker 1: up a lot more. Now that being said, personally, I
Speaker 1: often will use search because it gets me to what
Speaker 1: I want a lot faster than just navigating through a
Speaker 1: user interface. I do it for efficiency, but that's something
Speaker 1: that web page designers try to work around to encourage engagement.
Speaker 1: Or let's say that I've given prime position to my
Speaker 1: AI article on the homepage. All right, it's got a
Speaker 1: really good spot on there, but I see that way
Speaker 1: more people are clicking on a totally different article. Uh.
Speaker 1: We'll say it's taking the perfect Instagram photo of your food,
Speaker 1: and that article is performing way better than the AI
Speaker 1: r article. But that article is also featured lower down
Speaker 1: on the homepage, below the fold, as we would say,
Speaker 1: which means it's the point where you would have to
Speaker 1: actually scroll down but beyond the initial homepage view to
Speaker 1: actually see a link to that. Uh. We usually want
Speaker 1: to put the stuff that is really relevant and interesting
Speaker 1: and popular above the fold to make it easier for
Speaker 1: people to see. So that would tell me people are
Speaker 1: not as interested in the AI article as they are
Speaker 1: in the Instagram article, and I should probably swap those
Speaker 1: two out so that the more popular one that has
Speaker 1: a more prominent place and generates more traffic. So how
Speaker 1: do we get that data right? How do we actually
Speaker 1: know what people are doing? Websites tend to have a
Speaker 1: special file called an access log, and this log collects
Speaker 1: raw data about user behavior across a website. An access
Speaker 1: log is essentially a list of all the files that
Speaker 1: users have requested from a website. So remember when you
Speaker 1: visit a website, it means your computer is actually sending
Speaker 1: out a request. This is activated through some interaction you
Speaker 1: have with your web browsers, So you type in a
Speaker 1: web address, you click on a link. Either of those
Speaker 1: is technically a request. It gets sent out over the
Speaker 1: Internet and it shoots over to the appropriate computer system
Speaker 1: that houses those files. That computer processes the request and
Speaker 1: response to it, shooting that file back to you in
Speaker 1: the form of data packets which arrive at your computer,
Speaker 1: get reassembled, and then in your web browser it gets
Speaker 1: displayed as a web page. So for a web page,
Speaker 1: that would be probably an HTML file and all the
Speaker 1: associated files that go along with it, like embedded images
Speaker 1: or other media. The access log keeps count of all
Speaker 1: those requests across all the pages on a site. Now,
Speaker 1: that can be a lot of data, particularly for a
Speaker 1: really big website. So typically to make sense of all
Speaker 1: of that, you would need another program to kind of
Speaker 1: sort through all the information and put it into a
Speaker 1: format that's more easily understood. But access logs are usually
Speaker 1: a little limited in the information they can tell you.
Speaker 1: They can tell you certain types of information, but not
Speaker 1: all the granular stuff. Uh. Information it can tell you
Speaker 1: might include things like the number of unique visitors you have,
Speaker 1: which is uh uh. Which requests represent different devices versus
Speaker 1: those that are linked to a single device. That's what
Speaker 1: we mean by unique visitors. It doesn't again, doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean unique people. It could be the same person using
Speaker 1: ten thousand different devices to access your website. That would
Speaker 1: still be unique visitors because it would all be different devices. Uh.
Speaker 1: The access log might also tell you where the visitors
Speaker 1: associated servers domain name is, like whether the visitors navigating
Speaker 1: from the dot E, d U or dot com or
Speaker 1: dot gov site, or which online service provider the user
Speaker 1: is using, which I s P they are using. The
Speaker 1: access log can tell you which pages on a site
Speaker 1: are getting the most requests. That essentially tells you which
Speaker 1: pages are the most popular across your website. It might
Speaker 1: tell you what times of day or week, or month
Speaker 1: or even year are the most popular to visit your website.
Speaker 1: You can look at trends in data this way, so
Speaker 1: you might see that a lot of people, say, are
Speaker 1: visiting your site in the morning and fewer are visiting
Speaker 1: it in the afternoon, so you might want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you have the fresh content up in the
Speaker 1: mornings so that people are energized to get there. And
Speaker 1: maybe you even experiment, maybe you try and put up
Speaker 1: a second round of new content in the afternoons to
Speaker 1: see if you can encourage more visitors in the afternoons.
Speaker 1: But again, if you have a really big website with
Speaker 1: lots of pages, this approach can get a little unmanageable.
Speaker 1: But there are other ways to get data from users,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to go into that in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: An alternative to using access logs is using some code
Speaker 1: in JavaScript now. JavaScript is a coding language primarily used
Speaker 1: for web development. Netscape created JavaScript in order to build
Speaker 1: out interactive, dynamic elements in websites, so you didn't just
Speaker 1: have static pages that you never changed and therefore there
Speaker 1: was not really any reason to keep visiting them. It's
Speaker 1: not actually related to the Java programming language directly. It
Speaker 1: did take some inspiration from Java, but JavaScript really resembles
Speaker 1: the c programming language more than Java, and it's a
Speaker 1: client side scripting language. That means your browser processes the
Speaker 1: code rather than the web server. So we have server
Speaker 1: side and we have client side. JavaScript is client side
Speaker 1: JavaScript tracking involves inserting some JavaScript code into a web page. Typically,
Speaker 1: this code will send tracking information to an analytics service
Speaker 1: like Google Analytics, and this gives the service the ability
Speaker 1: to track specific behaviors on web pages that include that
Speaker 1: JavaScript code, including targeted ones that you want to pay
Speaker 1: very close attention to targeted behaviors. Um. For this to work,
Speaker 1: the web designer has to include this code on every
Speaker 1: web page on his or her site that they want
Speaker 1: to track. So when a user visits a web page,
Speaker 1: the user's browser executes the code in JavaScript. Assuming the
Speaker 1: user doesn't have JavaScript turned off. You can turn off JavaScript,
Speaker 1: so if you did that then this step would not happen.
Speaker 1: But when it does happen, it sends what is called
Speaker 1: an API called to the server to send data to
Speaker 1: that server. This type of data is dependent upon the
Speaker 1: code in that JavaScript code and the analysis engine that
Speaker 1: you are using. So if a web developer is only
Speaker 1: interested in where a user is coming from, where that
Speaker 1: user is going, and how long they are, you know
Speaker 1: where they went to after they were on your site
Speaker 1: and how long they were spending on your website. You
Speaker 1: could tweak your JavaScript to only collect that information if
Speaker 1: you wanted to. But as for where you're coming from,
Speaker 1: it can get a little more granular, in fact, a
Speaker 1: lot more granular than just whether it's a dot com
Speaker 1: or dot e du or dot gov. For example, you
Speaker 1: may have seen links to sites from their official social
Speaker 1: media feeds that contain some characters after the HTM tag
Speaker 1: at the end of the u r L. Those characters
Speaker 1: are codes. They give more information about how the user
Speaker 1: navigated to that page. The web server can't make any
Speaker 1: sense of this information and ignores it. So like when
Speaker 1: your web browser asks for that page, the server looks
Speaker 1: at everything that's after HTM and says, this doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense to me. Just send them the website and
Speaker 1: they will. But the JavaScript code can see that tag
Speaker 1: and link your visit with the associated social platform links.
Speaker 1: So when you get all the information sent off to
Speaker 1: the analytics company, they can return a report that says
Speaker 1: X percent of your visitors to this particular article got
Speaker 1: there through Facebook, why percent got there from Twitter, and
Speaker 1: z percent came from your homepage, and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a percent came from search. You can get it broken
Speaker 1: down in all these different ways, so you can really
Speaker 1: see where people are coming in, how they are discovering
Speaker 1: your your content, and that gives you ideas of where
Speaker 1: you should spend your efforts promoting your site. And if
Speaker 1: you see that hardly anyone is coming to your site
Speaker 1: from Facebook, it probably means that your links aren't really
Speaker 1: visible to a lot of people. They're not popping up
Speaker 1: in a lot of news feeds. Facebook is famous for
Speaker 1: tweaking its format several times uh and uh and changing
Speaker 1: things out where you'll hear companies say, like especially content
Speaker 1: companies say, Facebook change their algorithms and now we are
Speaker 1: our traffic has dropped incredibly low because we can't get
Speaker 1: our links out in front of people the way we
Speaker 1: used to. Uh. This lesson, by the way, I think
Speaker 1: is that you should never really commit fully to any
Speaker 1: one social platform as your primary way of reaching potential visitors,
Speaker 1: because as you have no control over whether or not
Speaker 1: that platform will change things, and if they do change things,
Speaker 1: it can it can really hurt you. It's a tough
Speaker 1: lesson to learn. Now that might mean that you would
Speaker 1: have to figure out some other strategy. You might have
Speaker 1: to pay Facebook for a promotion so that your your
Speaker 1: links get promoted in more news feeds and then you
Speaker 1: might get a little more traffic. Or it might mean
Speaker 1: you just have to use a totally different approach to
Speaker 1: try and reach other users. Um, it's it's a tough
Speaker 1: it's a tough situation to be in. JavaScript can also
Speaker 1: track user interactions like downloads as well, so if there
Speaker 1: is downloadable content on a web page, it's possible for
Speaker 1: the web administrator to track all that. You can also
Speaker 1: look at user settings like browser resolutions. You can look
Speaker 1: for browser plug ins. If you've ever used an ad
Speaker 1: blocking program and you've wondered how a website can detect that,
Speaker 1: and it sends you a message saying, hey, we see
Speaker 1: your blocking ads. Would you mind you know, not doing that?
Speaker 1: That could come from a JavaScript code and the web page.
Speaker 1: The JavaScript is able to tell that you've gotten ad
Speaker 1: blocker installed, and it triggers this server to send you
Speaker 1: the message to turn off that ad blocker if you
Speaker 1: want to access the content. JavaScript can identify unique visitors
Speaker 1: by analyzing cookies and the browsers quote unquote fingerprint. So
Speaker 1: what exactly are cookies? I'm sure you heard about Internet cookies. Well,
Speaker 1: those are special little data packets that your browser will
Speaker 1: send to web servers when you visit a website. Uh,
Speaker 1: they can get installed on your web browser. Because you
Speaker 1: visit a web page, it installs a cookie on your
Speaker 1: web browser, and then every time you come back, it
Speaker 1: registers that it's you that you've done this. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is actually a pretty valuable thing. It means that when
Speaker 1: you go to a website, it can register that you
Speaker 1: are a return visitor. And let's say you're using a
Speaker 1: service frequently and you log into that service, like you
Speaker 1: have to have a user name and password, Well, the
Speaker 1: cookie might out so that the service recognizes when you're
Speaker 1: navigating back to that service, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: do the log in all over again. It has already
Speaker 1: registered that you are you and you're fine, or maybe
Speaker 1: you are watching a video or listening to some music
Speaker 1: or something you navigate away. When you navigate back, it
Speaker 1: could pick up right where you left off. Because there
Speaker 1: was a cookie that was installed on your browser, it
Speaker 1: was able to register when you stopped watching or listening
Speaker 1: to something, and then when you return, it recognizes where
Speaker 1: who you are and then goes right back to the
Speaker 1: point where you left off. Cookies are what make that possible.
Speaker 1: But those data packets can send other types of information
Speaker 1: to servers, like which pages you have recently visited, or
Speaker 1: which ones you go to frequently, or topics you might
Speaker 1: have searched for in the past. And that information is
Speaker 1: valuable because it not only tells web administrators more about
Speaker 1: user behavior, it can also be a really valuable tool
Speaker 1: for marketing and advertising companies. This is where targeting advertising
Speaker 1: comes into play. So again, uh, in an ideal implementation,
Speaker 1: one where everybody benefits, targeted advertising would mean you would
Speaker 1: see ads for stuff you were already interested in. You
Speaker 1: would not see ads for stuff that did not pertain
Speaker 1: to you. The advertisers would quote unquote know what you
Speaker 1: are interested in because of web analytics and cookies and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. The data your computer is sending
Speaker 1: servers gives little bits of information about your interests and desires,
Speaker 1: and if it all works properly and everyone's on the
Speaker 1: up and up, the advertiser sends adds that you're most
Speaker 1: likely to find valuable, and that means that you might
Speaker 1: see an ad that you are legitimately interested in you
Speaker 1: actually want to buy that product or service, so you
Speaker 1: end up doing that because you were informed by that
Speaker 1: ad and everybody's a winner. The web content providers a winner,
Speaker 1: the advertisers a winner, the company you bought the service
Speaker 1: or product for as a winner, and you're a winner
Speaker 1: because you all got what you wanted and it's all
Speaker 1: done without your actual identity being part of that equation.
Speaker 1: The web analytics company doesn't care who you are. They
Speaker 1: care about what you like, so you're a user, a
Speaker 1: website visitor. The advertiser just doesn't have any desire to
Speaker 1: go beyond that. They just want to know what they
Speaker 1: can serve to you that will most UH entice you
Speaker 1: to engage with content and with advertising. That's the ideal implementation,
Speaker 1: but as we know, we do not live in an
Speaker 1: ideal world. Now, you can elect to block JavaScript, and
Speaker 1: you can block cookies that will prevent your browser from
Speaker 1: sending information to web servers in the ways i've described.
Speaker 1: The web access logs will still register when you visit
Speaker 1: a site, not you specifically, but rather that the site
Speaker 1: is UH is one among all the others you've hit
Speaker 1: that day. Now, before I conclude this episode, I want
Speaker 1: to stress that web analytics are gitimate and they are valuable.
Speaker 1: They help website administrators create better sites that people want
Speaker 1: to go to. They help content companies make sure they're
Speaker 1: creating the stuff people want to see. Uh. They help
Speaker 1: online retailers market their products more effectively so that people
Speaker 1: find what they're looking for more easily. They can improve
Speaker 1: the experience for all sides of the equation if they
Speaker 1: are used responsibly. But in our next episode, I'll look
Speaker 1: at how things can go wrong when we aren't careful.
Speaker 1: That wraps up this overview of web analytics and a
Speaker 1: little bit of online advertising, and to explain why it's important.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, we'll talk more about privacy issues
Speaker 1: and security issues. If you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, send me an email the addresses
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff rex dot com or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: both of those is tech Stuff H s W. Don't
Speaker 1: forget check out t public dot com slash tech stuff
Speaker 1: for all your tech stuff merchandise needs. Speaking of targeted advertise, UH,
Speaker 1: go get yourself a coffee mug or a T shirt
Speaker 1: or some stickers, and don't forget to follow us on
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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that
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