Week 4 -Web Analytics

1) Looking at the site useage, what doe the terms visits, page views and pages/visit mean? What does the bounce rate mean and does it vary much from day to day?

The term visits means how many people have looked at the website. Page views means how many pages of the website people have gone to. The term pages/visit refers to the average page views for visitors of the site. The bounce rate refers to the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. The bounce rate does vary a lot from day to day according to whether visitors find what they are looking for on the website. 

 

2) Now look at the traffic sources report. What are the three sources of traffic and where has most of the traffic come from? 

search engines, direct traffic and referring sites

3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?

Internet explorer

4) How many countries did visitors to OZRURAL come from and what were the top three countries?

OZRURAL visitors came from 24 countries. The top three countries were Australia, United States and United Kingdom

5) Having clicked every possible link on my analytics, make a few comments on (a) What you can track, (b) What you can track over time and 

(c) What you can’t track. 

6) What do the following terms mean? These are just a few, you may like to add some more and perhaps include them on the Moodle glossary.

These definitions came from Analytics Help Glossary: 

www.google.com.na/support/googleanalytics/bin/topic.

high bounce rate - bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

key words - A significant word or phrase, relevant to the web page or document in question

Average Page Depth - the average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session. 

click through rate - (CTR) The number of times an ad is clicked on, divided by the number of impressions it receives.

click - In Google Analytics reports, a 'Click' refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink from one page in a site to another.

Cookie - A small amount of text data given to a web browser by a web server. The data is stored on a user's hard drive and is returned to the specific web server each time the browser requests a page from that server.

Impression - A display of a referral link or advertisement on a web page.

Hyperlink - A text reference in a web page that, when clicked, directs the user's browser to another page or document. Hyperlinks are integral to the World Wide Web, allowing every page to be linked to any other page.

Navigation - Describes the movement of a user through a website or other application interface. This term also indicates the system of available links and buttons that the user can use to navigate through the website.

Pageview - A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser.

Session - A period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website, ending when the browser is closed or shut down, or when the user has been inactive on that site for a specified period of time.

Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors) - Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.

URL - A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet.

Visitor - A Visitor is a construct designed to come as close as possible to defining the number of actual, distinct people who visited a website. There is of course no way to know if two people are sharing a computer from the website's perspective, but a good visitor-tracking system can come close to the actual number. The most accurate visitor-tracking systems generally employ cookies to maintain tallies of distinct visitors.

Visitor Session - A Visitor Session is a defined period of interaction between a Visitor (both unique and untrackable visitor types) and a website.

Week 3 - Digital Design

1. In two paragraphs explain why a customer centric Web site design is so important, yet so difficult to accomplish.

If a website is confusing or difficult to navigate it is common for customers to abandon their shopping carts and not use the web site again. Creating a web site that is simple and easy to navigate can mean the difference between success and failure for that business. The website design should be based on the needs of their customers.

Progress in making the web site visually compelling and perhaps too visually compelling has lead to some organisations to spend too much time on the visual and not enough time on the actual business process and this can lead to enormous frustration among customers. A common mistake made in website designs is that the organisation will model their web site around their organisations structure. This may make sense to its creators within the organisation, but generally will create a frustrating experience for visitors to the site as it does not anticipate or attempt to meet their needs. To design a customer centric web site the design must meet the needs of the customers, such that it must be simple, self explanatory and have all the information the customers needs to know about the product and purchasing the product etc.

 

2. Define the term 'presence'. Write an additional paragraph that describes why firms that do business on the Web should be more concerned about presence than firms that operate in the physical world.

 

3. Write three paragraphs to briefly describe the things that Real Estate Agents can best accomplish through (1) their web sites (2) Mass media advertising (3) Personal contact

Week 2 - Part A: Navigating

a) What are the four (4) main points Michael Rappa makes about search?

- Navigating the web has become the core vocal point of some of the most important things that are happening on the Internet today.

- Amount of data being generated by various kinds of digital processes on a day to day basis each and every year, is not only vast but growing and that in itself presents both opportunities and problems.

- Searching through vast database of information is an essential element in terms of what people want and need to do.

- On one side of the equation is how people go searching for information but one critical thing to businesses and organisations is how do they ensure they are effectively found.

b) Write a paragraph or two, on four points made by Marissa Mayer, that you think were the most interesting or significant for business.

1) One of the reasons Google has been so successful is because they work in really small teams. Keeping the teams of engineers really small leads to a sense of empowerment, people making decisions around what’s the best feature, what do their users need and how are they going to build the best product.

2) Google runs advertisements on their search pages. They don’t appear on every page because there are some searches where the ad is not as useful as Google’s results.

3) Google is now putting advertisements next to news on their search. The advertisement has to be relevant to the news story.

4) Being able to search on mobile phones is a whole new market. A lot of people can’t search because they’re on the go, but being able to search on a mobile solves this problem. However there is a lot of challenges with mobile searches. Such as the interface, you’re working with a lot smaller screen, how do you get the attention on the ads as well as search results? Also a lot of the phones around the world aren’t data enabled.

Topic 1 Questions

1) Internet risks – give examples of four things that can go wrong with a transactional site? 


- Unauthorized people may gain access to your bank account details.

- Put in incorrect details e.g. Bankcard number.

- Transaction might to be processed properly.

- Purchase may never turn up e.g. on eBay

 

2) Write down a definition for each:

a) E-commerce: Consists of the buying and selling of products and services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. (wikepedia)

Or

Buying and selling using the Internet.

b) E-business: the utilization of information and communication technologies in support of all the activities of business. (wikipedia)

Or

The transformation of key business processes through the use of Internet technologies.

 

3) What is the difference between buy side and sell side eCommerce?

Buy side e-commerce refers to transactions to procure resources needed by an organization from its suppliers. Sell side e-commerce refers to transactions involved with selling products to an organizations customers.

So e-commerce transaction between organizations can be considered from two perspectives: sell side from the perspective of the selling organization and buy side from the perspective of the buying organization. (Dave Chaffey.com)

4) Describe the different types of eBusiness

Business-to-business (B2B) is commerce transaction between businesses.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) involves a business entity and end consumer.

Business-to-government (B2G) involves a business entity and government.

 

 

5) Which digital technology has the highest penetration rate? Explain and source your answer.

Mobile phone

 

6) List::Four drivers to adoption of sell-side e-commerce by business.

- Improve communication with customers

- Keep up with competitors

- Increase speed of access to information

- Improve communication with suppliers

 

 7) Four barriers to adoption of sell-side e-commerce by business.

- Set up cost

- Security/protection concerns

- Lack of knowledge

- Lack of time/resources

 

 8) How might a restaurant in Sturt Street Ballarat benefit from an online presence?

A lot of people search for places online and read reviews to figure out where to go to eat. With online presence, information on the restaurant is accessible globally to customers 24 hours a day. Many people who are looking for a place to eat would use the Internet as a first place of call because of its convenience and to save time. The restaurant could display their menu and contact details online and even have online bookings to save time.

 

 9) What are some examples of Digital information??

- Internet

-Television

-Cell phones

 

10) What is the semantic web? Are we there yet?

The semantic web is an evolving extension of the world wide web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.