Using Yahoo Site Stats Resources

Using Yahoo! Site Stats Resources

Store Editor and Web Hosting statistics are completely different, and each has its own data set. You need to view the appropriate statistics for the method you are using to create your pages. If you are using a combination of both Store Editor and Web Hosting, you need to mine both sets of stats.

Both stats packages are Web based, so you can view your stats with just your browser. The advantage of using the Web Hosting side is that you can download the raw log files for use with a third-party analysis tool, for more advance statistical reporting or have it automated. You can also use a workaround for advanced statistical reporting by using a third-party online stats tool if you are using Store Editor (discussed later).

Web Hosting has its own statistics section, called Site Statistics, under the Hosting Control Panel (see Figure 17.1). Site Statistics pulls information from log files that track traffic only to your Web Hosting account. If you do not use Web Hosting, you will not see any statistics. These statistics do not apply to traffic from the Store Editor or Catalog Manager products. With Web Hosting, you can download raw log files to use with your own Web statistics software, such as WebLog Expert (www.weblogexpert.com) (see Figure 17.2), WebTrends (www.webtrends.com), and LiveSTATS by DeepMetrix (www.deepmetrix.com).

Figure 17.1. You can view Web Hosting statistics in the Web Hosting Control Panel.

Figure 17.2. WebLog Expert is a great third-party tool for analyzing your access log.

Yahoo! Talk

Site Statistics is Yahoo!'s Web Hosting statistics program.

In contrast, the statistics maintained in Store Manger under the Statistics column apply only to traffic on the Store Editor Web pages and sales of products in Catalog Manager. When a visitor goes to a Store Editor page, the stats gets recorded in at least three places in Store Manager's Statistics section: Reports, Page Views, and Click Trails. When a visitor makes a purchase, the sale is recorded in at least two places in Store Manager's Statistics section: Sales and Reports.

Viewing Web Hosting Site Statistics

Site statistics provide basic Web statistics supplied by Yahoo!, including these (see Figure 17.3):

• Page views How many visits for each page

• Visitor profiles Which operating systems, browser, and screen resolution visitors are using

• Referrers Whether a visitor clicked on a link from another website or came from a search engine, and what keywords were used

Figure 17.3. Site Statistics is Yahoo!'s built-in statistics program for Web Hosting.

To view Web Hosting statistics, follow these steps:

1.	From the Manage My Services control panel, click the Web Hosting Control Panel link.
2.	Scroll down until you see the Site Statistics link, and click the link.

Configuring and Downloading Access Log Files

Downloading access log files and analyzing them with a more robust statistics-analyzer program, such as WebLog Expert, can give you more in-depth detail on how your site is performing. Before you can start downloading log files, you need to turn them on. As a default, the Yahoo! store has access log files turned off. You must turn them on and configure access log setup. You can select how many recent logs you want to keep; whether you want to roll access logs daily, weekly, or monthly; and which time zone you are in.

To configure access log files, follow these steps:

1.	From the Manage My Services control panel, click the Web Hosting Control Panel link.
2.	Scroll down until you see the Access Log Files link, and click the link.
3.	Configure the settings under the Access Log Setup column.

Warning

You can keep only up to 28 log files. Therefore, make sure you download the files before the system overwrites the old files with the new ones.

To download access log files, follow these steps:

1.	From the Manage My Services control panel, click the Web Hosting Control Panel link.
2.	Scroll down until you see the Access Log Files link, and click the link.
3.	Click the View Access Log link under the Access Log Setup column. From here, you can download each log file.

Viewing Store Editor Statistics

If you are using the Store Editor and Catalog Manager, you can view your statistics in Store Manger.

To view Store Editor statistics, follow these steps:

1.	From the Manage My Services control panel, click the Store Manager Control Panel link.
2.	In the Statistics column, you can view statistics on page views, sales references, and searches (see Figure 17.4). Figure 17.4. If you are using the Store Editor and Catalog Manager, you can view built-in statistics in the Statistics column in Store Manager.

If you are using Store Editor, you will not be able to download access log files for more detailed statistics. Although you can get basic statistics, we recommend using a third-party online stats solution. This is a great workaround for users of Store Editor.

Using Third-Party Online Service for Detailed Statistics (Workaround for Store Editor Users)

Store Editor users can get more in-depth statistical reporting by using a third-party online stats service. This is a workaround because there are no access log files for you to download and analyze when using Store Editor. Instead of having your statistics sent to Yahoo!'s access log files, as with Web Hosting, your store statistics are sent to the third-party online stats server access logs.

When you sign up for an account, you simply add a piece of code to your RTML template. Every time someone visits a Web page, the Web tracker code sends important information to your third-party online Web stats log. The system automatically generates charts, graphs, and statistics to make analyzing your traffic easier.

The difference with this online stats service is that you do not need to install software on your machine or be restricted to using just Yahoo!'s stats reports; the Web-analysis software is installed on their server. However, you might need to consult with an RTML programmer to add the code to your RTML template.

Statscounter (www.statscounter.com) and Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics/) are two free online stats counter services you can use. You can sign up for an account on their websites. Google Analytics (see Figure 17.5) and Statscounter (see Figure 17.6) both provide more detailed statistics than the built-in Yahoo! stats.

Figure 17.5. Google Analytics is a free online stats service provided by Google.

Figure 17.6. Statscounter is a free online stats service. You can install an invisible counter on each of your Web pages.

Let's deconstruct an example of a server analysis report to understand what makes them tick.

Deconstructing a Statscounter Report

Here are some of the statistics you can view with Statscounter reports:

• General statistics Page views, visitors, bandwidth

• Activity statistics for page views, visitors, and bandwidth Daily, by hour of day, by day of week, by month

• Access statistics Pages, files, images, directories, entry pages, exit pages, paths, file types

• Visitor statistics Host, top-level domains, countries, U.S. states, cities, organizations

• Referrers statistics Referring sites, referring URLs, search engines, engines and phrases, search phrases, search keywords

• Browsers statistics Browsers, operating systems, spiders

• Error statistics Types, 404 errors

Let's take a look at some of the statistics provided and discuss why they are important to analyze:

• Visitors Monitoring visitor statistics can tell you whether your traffic is increasing or decreasing (see Figure 17.7). These statistics can give you in insight into how well your marketing campaign is doing. For example, if you are doing a TV or print advertisement, you will want to monitor whether your visitor rate has increased during that particular marketing campaign. You cannot track these types of advertisements as you can with banner click-through, so this is one of the best ways to monitor this type of advertisement campaign.

  Figure 17.7. Visitor reports show how many people are coming to your site.

  

• Page views Page views (see Figure 17.8) are a great way to see which product pages are popular and which ones need additional exposure. For example, you might find that certain pages receive more traffic than expected. This could be the result of search-engine placement or an interest that you never thought existed. You can use this data to make changes to the page, such as adding products on that page or creating menu links to lead them to other product pages. Page views are also a great way to monitor advertising campaigns. You can create new pages specifically for each campaign and then use the page-view data for that particular page to see how much traffic that campaign produced.

  Figure 17.8. Page view reports show how many times each page is being requested.

  

• Search engines If you are serious about generating search-engine traffic, these reports are a must. With the search-engine reports, you can see which search engines are sending visitors and how much traffic they're generating (see Figure 17.9). You can also get a breakdown of the keywords that visitors typed in to get to your site from each search engine. With these reports, you can determine which keywords or keyword phrases that you are targeting are getting picked up by the search engine. You can use this to adjust your keyword content on your Web pages.

  Figure 17.9. Search-engine reports show which search engines are sending you traffic and what keywords or keyword phrases are used.

  

• Entry and exit pages Not all traffic starts at your home page (see Figure 17.10). Search engines and other sites linking to your site can send traffic to any of your Web pages. Figuring out why those pages are your entry pages can help you duplicate the tactic on your other pages. You will also want to determine why those are your exit pages. Figure out why people are leaving your site and from which pages. The page might load too slowly, you might not have a call to action, the sales copy might not be good enough, and so on. Fixing these issues can dramatically increase sales.

  Figure 17.10. Entry and exit reports show which pages people are landing on to enter your site and which pages they are exiting from.

  

• Geographic location If you are selling products internationally, this is a great report to see if you are getting traffic in other countries (see Figure 17.11). If you are selling only in the United States, you can view statistics by state and even city.

  Figure 17.11. Geographic location reports can be of assistance if customer location is important to you.

  

• Referrer You can get a list of all domains and even the exact URL of where your traffic is coming from (see Figure 17.12). This helps in determining how well your link-exchange program is going or why others sites are linking and sending you traffic. You can also use this information to see if your banner-advertisement campaign is sending you traffic.

  Figure 17.12. With referrer reports, you can view a list of other websites that are sending traffic to your site.

  

These are some of the report statistics you will use the most. Make sure you explore all the specific reports to see if the information holds any value for you.

Your Web server reports and the statistics they provide are a valuable tool to fine-tune your marketing program and give you a window into what is happening at your Yahoo! store. In the next chapter, we cover the lost stepchild of marketingpublic relationsand how you can use it to market your Yahoo! store.