Woopra Forums » General Discussion

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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  Woopra is about the numbers, but it is also about finding the connections behind the numbers. It's nice to say, "89% of my visitors use FireFox," but what does that really tell you about your users.

  This week's Woopra Weekly invites you to share your thoughts about what the numbers really mean to you. What makes the numbers into something you can use to generate content, to improve your site's design, to get a better understanding of usability, to improve your monetization strategy...what numbers matter to you and what do they really mean to you and your site?

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  rappinhood
  Member

  I can use the numbers to generate content, and perhaps when I see who is visiting what content, to target content to particular visitors. As it happens, most of my traffic is from the US and UK, and it's fun being able to see exactly what catches someone's eye. In theory, you could also use search data to generate content ideas. I'm also thinking that being able to see the traffic sources tells me which of my promotional efforts are working best, and where I need to focus.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  Great, but how about some specifics.

  So you see that US folks are looking at subject X...but why not the related subject Y? How do you figure out the relevance of what they are looking at and use it to generate content ideas, and/or figure out why this article works and the other ones, which are just as relevant, don't?

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Carlitos
  Member

  I installed Woopra in my personal blog, which is generally speaking about my life as an Argentine expat living in Slovenia.

  Woopra is helping me realize that all those little SEO improvements everybody talks about actually are really important (most of my traffic comes from search engines (70%+), even though when I've started doing SEO only now).

  Of course, this is not something exclusive to Woopra -- Google Analytics does it too, but the immediacy of Woopra's real-time results made me act quick.

  Quite surprisingly, I found out that I still need to support 800x600 resolutions, so that affected the choice of my next theme, as well as sheer speed (many people come using old Windows 98 machines, can you believe it?)

  Last but not least, I seem to have quit a strong following from people looking for recipes of grilled chestnuts (no, really!)... and I remember that I posted about them when I didn't have anything more "interesting" to blog about.

  Thank you Woopra! :-)

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  rappinhood
  Member

  That's the tough part, Lorelle. I think if they are looking at a particular article, that also ties in with keywords that people are searching for, then I know I'm on to a winner. On one of the sites I wrote for, ghostwriting articles always scored high in both keywords and article hits, so I knew that the audience was interested in that topic. On this blog I cna see that people are interested in article writing techniques, as this shows up in the 'directories' view.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  xorsyst
  Member

  After reading the question, I opened up my Woopra client and really thought about what I really use the client for so far.

  1. The Stats Ticker
  I have seen mentions in the forum requesting a way to turn this feature off, however I feel it's one of the most important features that I pay attention to. When I see any red number in the ticker, it usually motivates me investigate:

  "Is this just a normally slow day" or "Did one of my placement on a SERP (search engine result page) drop?"

  Pageviews are really important to me as I am going after advertisers, so I plan out my daily pageviews for the month in order to maintain a certain level of traffic. It is nice to be able to have that ticker that can alert me the moment my pageviews start to dip.

  2. Analytics -> Pages -> Directories

  I like this analytics page in Woopra because for many people with blogs that use a category division, it breaks down which categories are receiving the most hits. For content generation, you can look at it a few different ways.

  The higher the number of a particular directory, you may want to start focusing your content in that particular category. Your visitors are drawn to it obviously, so you should give them what they want.

  If you notice that people aren't viewing a certain category, figure out why not. Are you not posting content that would fit in that category? Do you not care for the category? Why is it even there?

  This particular analytics page gives great information for how visitors use your site.

  3. Dashboard -> My searches -> query/url

  Many people don't realize that search engines rank pages differently. If you optimize a page for Google, it may not be the best way to optimize it for Yahoo. What I like about this bit of data from Woopra is that it breaks down the keywords by engine, something you don't usually see as easy with other analytic programs.

  How I use this page is that I will see X page is getting great results with Yahoo. Maybe I should keep that page the same, but make another page with a different title, different url permalink, different position of content, keywords, etc. Page optimization for different engines is something I could write a whole separate post about. However what I am trying to say is that this window allows me to see what works and what doesn't, for a particular engine. Very useful.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  This is fabulous. It's a new way of looking at the numbers, isn't it.

  I love that you all are using the new directory segmentation feature as it does give you a unique perspective on the virtual directories (categories) as well. It shows you what groups of content people want, thus giving them more. Excellent.

  The point about SEO and site-specific search engine optimization is very important, and the most overlooked.

  Carlitos Yoder: Recipes! Now you know what they really want. :D But isn't it interesting to see how this changes our view of our blog and our readers' view. The lesson about screen size is an important one, too. Good for you. I have several blogs that service a strong audience outside of the United States so this is very important to me to understand what they are really using to access my sites. We often assume they are using what we are using.

  rappinghood: You are so right. The keywords are so important, giving us all kinds of messages from our visitors and readers on what they want.

  These are great. What other things are you looking for in the numbers? What numbers aren't you finding? What numbers would you like to see be included in your stats? And how would they change how you run your site?

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  friz
  Member

  - When I started my site I assumed people would be looking for the same kind of information I did. So I put a lot of time in transcribing music and putting this on my site. After a while I noticed most of my visitors visited the pages with lessons. Most used keywords are "free" and "lessons".
  So for me it's important when generating content for my site.

  - if I promote my site somewhere, does it lead to more traffic? Was the promotion worth the time (and money)?

  Numbers for screen resolution, browsers, etc are not so important to me as I always design my sites with cross browser compatibility in mind. Resolution from 1024x768 and up.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  When you see the numbers associated with keywords, it does change the direction of your content, doesn't it? You start to think about meeting your readers' needs rather than doing it because you think it is interesting.

  Oh, I like the issue of understanding where to put your energy based upon the return on the investment of promoting your site and interacting with difference services.

  I met a personal blogger at SOBCon, the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference, tonight who told me about how he spending so much time promoting his blog through Digg, Technorati, Twitter, and a bunch of other networking services. I asked him if he blogged about technical issues. He said no. "So why are you wasting your time submitting your personal journal stuff to Digg? They specialize in technology-related stories, though unusual newsy stuff does make an appearance once in a while."

  He assumed it was just something everyone had to do. I asked him if he got any referrer traffic from Digg or got dugg much. Nothing at all. So why bother? He sat up and realized that he wasn't thinking about what he was doing, he was just doing what "bloggers are supposed to do" wasting his time with ineffectual promotion.

  You're so right. If you know which social networking services are getting you the best return, then you can put your energy there. For him, it was Twitter - so I told him to spend more time there. It's great to broaden your market, but it if ain't working, stop it.

  Thanks for the great point! We often get so caught up in the trying we forget to evaluate the reality on the ground.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  John P.
  Chief Cat Herder

  I'd like to chime in here and share some things I've learned from looking at my stats.

  • 50% of my recent site traffic comes from only 10 articles. And I have over 1,100 articles on my site!
  • The articles driving most of the traffic are completely frivolous! I would have never guessed they would drive that kind of traffic, or have that staying power.
  • The things I really want people to pay attention to? Well, they don't really. Not by comparison at least.

  What I've taken from all of this goes back to something I discussed during my lecture at WordCamp Dallas. Don't feel limited to just one topic!

  I write about serious stuff, silly stuff, and everything in between. I've found that people will keep coming back to you and reading the things that you want them to, as long as you also feed them things that are of general interest in between.

  John

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  scudlly
  Member

  The Popular Page stats has really made me have along hard look at my site pages i thought had good content have had next to no hits while others are in the 100's.

  And resolution support is very helpful

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Carlitos
  Member

  John,

  I watched the webcast of your talk at WordCamp Dallas, and I've been feverishly working on implementing some of your suggestions in both my personal blog (blog.argentinaslovenia.com) and my company's website (ceneje.si)

  Since ceneje.si was already quite SEO'd, I noticed most of the improvements at my blog's stats (and also because your talk was heavily directed at blogs & blogging).

  Right now Woopra is helping us with an issue we had since we hit the so-called "critical mass" -- to make our users stay longer at our Website. Our bounce rate is not the best ;-)

  So thanks a lot, John! Unfortunately I don't think I'll implement Rapid Access after all in my blog... but that's another story ;-)

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  xavierp
  Member

  I have learned something I find telling - the largest number of hits go to one page. I posted a cartoon and the word "lesbians" is in there somewhere. I put it there because I found it funny. I now get a (comparatively) huge number of hits from frustrated people looking for pictures of ladies together!

  The 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on places are for some of my technical articles, but the biggest number of hits stat always makes me smile :)

  So the lesson is, target the site all you want, but you can receive good figures sheerly by accident. If I were more cynical I could rebrand the site to give those visitors what they want, but that's not something I want to get into....

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  braddock
  Member

  My numbers mean I can stop struggling to get my site to display properly in Internet Explorer 6. IE 6 is behind Safari with only 6.5% of my visitors using it. They also tell me I can finally embrace my wide side. I really love to take advantage of the empty space on larger monitors. With only 3% of my visitors viewing at less than 1280x1024, I can begin thinking horizontally. It's like a huge CRT has been lifted off my shoulders.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  Isn't it amazing how a single word or phrase can attract a lot of attention to our site, whether or not that word is important or inline with our blog's purpose.

  Unfortunately, most of those attracted to sexual terms and funky phrases aren't the folks who return, and those who return for more and tell their friends are the ones you really want to keep. That's where to put your energy.

  Posted 1 year ago #
• 

  lakridserne
  Member

  I use them for fun

  --
  Lakridserne
  I'm webmaster on a lot of sites. You can see them all in my signature on my site.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  lori
  Member

  The numbers help me in two ways: as a web developer and as a writer.

  For web dev, the search engine information, browser and OS info, and screen resolution are very helpful in determining what current trends are and where they are headed. This information influences how I build and design websites.

  My favorite recent trend is that most of my visitors who use IE have switched to IE7. Firefox comes in second with only 1/3 the amount of users as IE7, but 3x the amount of IE6 users. 800x600 is still the top resolution by far. Even though target audience varies for each client, it is helpful to have a baseline until more specific information is gathered.

  As a writer, it is very helpful to know where people are coming from, what they were searching for, what pages they are reading, links they are clicking, and time spent on each page.

  My readers fall into 3 groups: the autistic community, web geeks, and mac users. Being able to tell how each group of people is finding my site and what posts they are reading the most helps me get a sense of the kinds of information that are most interesting or helpful to my readers.

  The members/tagged visitors section is a fun way to identify some readers on a more personal level.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  shopsinc
  Member

  One interesting thing I've noticed is that not many people use the extensive category listing I have on the home page. And of those, the vast majority go to a few particular categories. Based on that info I think I'll either move the list, or shorten it to be "most popular categories" since it's wasting prime real estate.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  shopsinc: That's an invaluable lesson to learn, isn't it. So many people went nuts with abusing categories as tags. I think of such usage as standing in front of the tomato sauce section of the grocery store. I can choose canned, bottled, or packaged. There is with meat, cheese, mushrooms, and tons of varieties of herbs, spices, and thicknesses. It's overwhelming. I can't decide. When a visitor is confronted with too many choices, how do they choose? Give them less choices and they're happier.

  Good lesson!

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  ellaella
  Member

  I've only been using Woopra a few days (and my access has been down since last night) but something that jumped out at me right away was how many times my categories were accessed -- far more than I ever knew or dreamed.

  The practical application of that for me is this: my blog is roughly 80% food and I had a page with links to all the recipes. A few weeks ago, after yet another raping of my content by a single user (discovered with Sitemeter), I made the page both private and password protected. To my surprise, without that as an option, people are going to the category cloud. I use only 50 categories, so it's not a chore for them.

  I might never make that recipe page public again. An index of some sort would be nice but I'm thinking of using tags in a leaner, smarter way to create, in essence, a cross-index.

  Thanks, Woopra!

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  50 categories!!! Surely you mean tags! Wow. That's overwhelming. Either way, isn't it amazing what we are learning about how all the numbers work in reality, rather than making assumptions and guessing.

  A site map listing of your content, grouped by categories, on a single page is always helpful. Content theft is a perpetual problem, though people are getting smarter about understanding copyright and Fair Use. We just have to defend ourselves and educate others all the time until they get it.

  But good for you for looking at your content in a new way and helping improve your site's navigation. Wonderful!

  Have others noticed this in the new Directories and Categories feature in the Analytics panel? How has it changed your thinking?

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  ellaella
  Member

  50 categories for the whole blog. 1 - 5 per post. You think that's a lot?

  When I started my blog it was on wp.com before tags were available.

  My theme displays archives by category. Do you think that's sufficient instead of adding it to my (mostly text) sitemap?

  Thanks in advance for your insight.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  Oh, yeah. That's a lot. And tags were ALWAYS available.

  A couple of things for clarity.

  To understand more about how WordPress works with tags and categories, as well as the differences between tags and categories, which relate to all types of blogs, see Tags and Tagging in WordPress. In a nutshell, categories are your blog's table of contents. Tags are your index words.

  In WordPress, categories have always been tags, as they should, since they are bodies of work, collections of like content on your blog. A tag could be added with a WordPress Plugin or just by inserting rel="tag" into your post content. Bingo, tag.

  I'm on WordPress.com and I created the A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users for WordPress.com users so they could add site search tags (or whatever style tags) to their blogs without Plugins.

  As I said, too many categories is like standing in the grocery aisle trying to choose among hundreds of options. With three to seven options, I can quickly make a choice. With 50, I ignore it because I don't even know where to start. When I teach and speak about the basics of beginning a blog (or remodeling), I always recommend no more than 5-7, 10 is pushing it. Tags, you can have millions. Who cares. They are really per-post content based.

  So using Woopra to help track down your most popular will help you help your readers by giving them fewer choices, but also by giving them an instant visual message on what your blog is about. As a table of contents, your blog categories are gateways to your content, inviting them in for deeper inspection.

  As for your Theme archives, if it displays them by category, excellent. You are ahead of the game for most people. If it includes chronological order, remove that as no one but you cares. It's just clutter.

  Also, a visible page with a listing of your posts is called a "site map" (two words). A sitemap (one word) is the word for the hidden XML file, if you have one, that many search engines now use to trace through all the content on your blog or site. Again, I wish I was in charge of naming things as this was a seriously poor choice and has caused endless confusion where people download a sitemap Plugin thinking they are going to get a visible display and they see nothing on their blog.

  Good for you and I hope this helps. And I'm so glad you brought this up. It's a great point and one people are often confused about.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  sjhopson
  Member

  One thing I've noticed in the forums is that when there is a link inside the post, it doesn't work. When I try to find the address inside the link (right clicking on the mouse), I can't find the address.

  So how do I click on a link that's not working if I want to find out more about what the person is linking to? For example, Lorelle, you have a link in your last reply above (A Tagging Bookmarklet......etc) and when I hover my mouse over it, it doesn't work. I'm using FF AND IE 7 - it's not working for either.

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  Lorelle VanFossen
  Administrator

  Thanks for catching that. Some Plugins were added to the forum and now links are stripped. We'll get that changed. Thanks!

  Posted 1 year ago #
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  bound2please
  Member

  As many others says, Woopra is the tool to track traffic, much more intuitiv, and the one number one thing, how much time people spend on each page. 25% to one page doesn't make it good if people spend 2 seconrds on it.

  Tnx Woopra for the best analytic tool for private users

  Jens

  Posted 1 year ago #

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