Improving your conversion rate through log analysis

[JamesBond]

I have read an excellent publication in how to setup some key indicators of how your site is doing and to track it over time.

For example, the authors of the report suggest defining a variable such as Heavy Users, where the Heave Users would be all users that browse more than say 15 pages.

You would then want to track these Heavy Users OVER TIME, to see if your site has improved (perhpas as you redesign). So, you would want to see how many Heavy Users on Oct 1, 2, 3,etc, etc.

Now, with all my research on log analyzers to date, I have not been able to find one that allows me to define my own indicators (such as heavy users) and then to display them over time (as opposed to aggrate).

For me, I can see that tracking such indicators over time is a good way to tell if your site is doing well or not and to get the CR up!

The solution I came up with is a cumbersome one, and involves setting up my own database and populating it with daily stats generated by a log analyzer -- and so, I turn to the experts in this forum to see if there is a way to automate this in some way, shape or form.

Thanks in advance for any thoughs on this.

[cgrantski]

The ones I know of that can do that - Omniture, Coremetrics, WebTrends, and I think HitBox --- are pretty expensive. I think this is a solid indicator of site success and would also like to know about cheaper tools that can do it.

How would I find this article?

[Matt Probert]

For example, the authors of the report suggest defining a variable such as Heavy Users, where the Heave Users would be all users that browse more than say 15 pages.

It is not possible to track individual sessions from http log files, there is no way of identifying a request to the http server. Nor indeed do all requests reach the http server. Indeed http log files are ONLY useful to a server administrator to review requests being made to the http server, NOT the web site.

Sorry. Bottom line is, if you want to know how a campaign is doing either try to track it directly with a unique URL or review your sales figures :(

Matt

[JamesBond]

Gents:
The excellent article that I refered to is called "Keys to Unlocking Your Marketing Genius: Improve Conversion by Measuring the Key Scenarios on Your Web Site." -- it sounds like one of those ebooks but it is not - and its free.

I really like the concept of key indexes that guide you along with sites performance, especially over time.

As we all know, a phrase here a picture there can double a conversion rate - it would be sure nice to know what worked and what didn't.

The article above suggests using webtrends and to extra from it things like session length etc. and then to furthe process this info via a spreadsheet.

What I don't understand is that since these reporting packages are already capable of showing tracking over time (ie. page views per day ) and show this over any period of time in a nice graph - it should be possible to make your own indicator and have that track over time (again over time is the important thing here - aggrete information doesn't show trends)

Interestingly enough the authors refer to WebTrends package AND then suggest a 'spreadsheet approach' to compliment WebTrends. Given their apparent authority on the subject, I conclude that it may NOT be possible to get package such as WebTrends to generate indicators since if it was, they guys would likely have used them.

So, why the heck not! Don't people want to know how average session length, displayed by day ove a year?

Or bounce rate over period of a 3 months, etc, etc. This is the kind of info that pays money.

Cheers,
Paul