Depth of Visit - Deciphering Web Metrics Pt 3
Depth of Visit is a metric that gives you an idea of how many people are viewing how many pages on your blog or website. Once again, I am using Google Analytics as an example.
The example below shows you the Depth of Visit graph for my hubsite, for nearly 2 months of data.
As you can see in the graph, the vast majority of visitors (253) only viewed one web page during their visit. The curve declines in typical "long tail" fashion, with only one visitor viewing 20 or more pages in a single session. Note: As I understand it, Google Analytics filters out search engines and other bots. I've also factored out my own visits, so there appears to be a few people who have done a fairly comprehensive viewing of my hubsite.
The value of the Depth of Visit graph is difficult to gauge, and as with the Length of Visit graph, depends upon your own goals. For example, if you've put a lot of effort writing many pages of information about a topic, you'll likely want all visitors, ideally speaking, to visit every page.
I'm hazarding a guess, though, that more than 3 pages in a single session is a lot for most people, unless they are doing research. The reality is that with attention spans being what they are, most people won't visit an entire website all at once. However, they may come back at some later date to view the remaining web pages.
So a metric like Depth of Visit has to be paired with a more thorough analysis of each visitor over time. Tracking every unique page each visitor has viewed is a more valuable metric, but requires a fairly thorough analysis that only specialized web analytics packages offer. However, if you are getting a lot of search engine traffic, with little in the way of visitor loyalty, then either your visitors are finding what they want on the page they landed on, or they didn't find what they wanted and left unsatisfied. (Unless you set up a community around your blog, including forums and comments, it'll be hard to gauge whether your readers are really finding what they want.)
I typically write my own database reporting for such complex metrics. In fact, such reports require complex logic that requires a combination of database reporting and programming. For those interested in such metrics reporting, I'll cover some of this over on the WebGuru multi-blog, which is currently under construction.
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, blogging, pro blogging, multi blogs, web metrics, web analytics
The example below shows you the Depth of Visit graph for my hubsite, for nearly 2 months of data.
As you can see in the graph, the vast majority of visitors (253) only viewed one web page during their visit. The curve declines in typical "long tail" fashion, with only one visitor viewing 20 or more pages in a single session. Note: As I understand it, Google Analytics filters out search engines and other bots. I've also factored out my own visits, so there appears to be a few people who have done a fairly comprehensive viewing of my hubsite.
The value of the Depth of Visit graph is difficult to gauge, and as with the Length of Visit graph, depends upon your own goals. For example, if you've put a lot of effort writing many pages of information about a topic, you'll likely want all visitors, ideally speaking, to visit every page.
I'm hazarding a guess, though, that more than 3 pages in a single session is a lot for most people, unless they are doing research. The reality is that with attention spans being what they are, most people won't visit an entire website all at once. However, they may come back at some later date to view the remaining web pages.
So a metric like Depth of Visit has to be paired with a more thorough analysis of each visitor over time. Tracking every unique page each visitor has viewed is a more valuable metric, but requires a fairly thorough analysis that only specialized web analytics packages offer. However, if you are getting a lot of search engine traffic, with little in the way of visitor loyalty, then either your visitors are finding what they want on the page they landed on, or they didn't find what they wanted and left unsatisfied. (Unless you set up a community around your blog, including forums and comments, it'll be hard to gauge whether your readers are really finding what they want.)
I typically write my own database reporting for such complex metrics. In fact, such reports require complex logic that requires a combination of database reporting and programming. For those interested in such metrics reporting, I'll cover some of this over on the WebGuru multi-blog, which is currently under construction.
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, blogging, pro blogging, multi blogs, web metrics, web analytics
