Urchin Reporting Review

Last Updated: 2/27/2004

One of the best attributes of Urchin has always been its ease of use. Urchin has always provided easy to read and understand reports and charts. I have seen many Web analytics programs that require a lot of interpretation and explanation to my clients. By having an easy to use and understand interface, the time required to explain reports can be reduced greatly.

As mentioned previously, reports remain restricted and can only be accessed with the use of a user name and password by logging in to the Urchin report module. The first screen that loads is the Traffic/Sessions Graph. This graph gives you a quick overview of the number of sessions over the week's period. Urchin defines a session as follows:

A Session is a defined quantity of visitor interaction with a website. The definition will vary depending on how visitors are tracked. Some common visitor tracking methods and corresponding session definitions are: IP-based Visitor Tracking, IP+User Agent Visitor Tracking and Unique Visitor Tracking (cookie-based, such as Urchin's UTM). For a more detailed explanation please visit http://help.urchin.com/doc/glossary.cgi#S

The data range can be changed at the bottom left corner of any report. You also have the option to click on the bars to make them "explode" or to change the bar graph to a line graph. They use a technology developed by Adobe named SVG, which helps make these reports more interactive and attractive. In addition, every report view gives you these SVG options and export options, which include export to text, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.

You May Click on ALL Pictures to Enlarge in New Window

The next screen shot displays a similar graph. But. The information that is graphed is the "Pageviews" for that week. Urchin defines a Pageview as follows:

"A page is defined as any file or content delivered by a web server that would generally be considered a web document. This includes HTML pages (.html, .htm, .shtml), script-generated pages (.cgi, .asp, .cfm, etc.), and plain-text pages. It also includes sound files (.wav, .aiff, etc.), video files (.mov, etc.), and other non-document files. Only image files (.jpeg, .gif, .png), JavaScript (.js) and style sheets (.css) are excluded from this definition. Each time a file defined as a page is served, a pageview is registered by Urchin."

As you can see below, I have selected the line graph mode for this pageview graph.

Urchin allows you to view not only the sessions and pageview reports they also give you the ability to view a hits graph, bytes graph and even a load balancer graph. In addition, Urchin gives you a data summary of all of these graphs on one page at the "Summary" link. That completes the traffic analysis portion of the Urchin Web analytics suite.

We will now move on to the "Visitors and Sessions" reporting section. The first report shown is the "Visitors by Day" graph. This graph has all the features of the other graphs but provides an additional level of detail. As you can see, there are orange and green colors on the bar graphs. The orange, represents the first time unique visitors and the green represents the prior unique visitors. You can click on the green part of a bar and it will tell you the exact number of prior unique visitors that visited that day. Urchin tracks this information with a 1st party cookie.

Urchin gives you the ability to view this information both by "Visitor", as shown in this screen shot as well as by "Session". The next screen shot you will see is termed "Unique Sessions." Keep in mind that there is also a "Unique Visitors" graph that does the same thing but with different data points. The unique sessions graph can be charted as a bar graph or pie chart. I have selected the pie chart for this report. This report gives you the percentage of initial sessions, versus repeat sessions over that data range period. You can actually click on the piece of the chart to make it stand out, like an exploding affect. You will see examples of this later on.

Another interesting report in the visitors and sessions section of Urchin is the "Visitor Loyalty" graph. This report helps you understand the loyalty factor of your Web visitors. The more loyal your visitors (the more sessions per unique cookie) the higher the bar graphs will be on the right side. There is a similar report named "Session Frequency" which provides this information in a different light. All reports have their own individual purpose.

This final screen shot displays the visitors and sessions summary overview. It provides the user with the ability to see summarized numbers of the above graphs in an organized and efficient layout. I cannot stress how important it is to display this information in an intuitive manner. Urchin has done an excellent job in this respect! The format comprises consistent navigation on the left, date range information at the top and bottom left. The data you want is right in the middle, and the help is customized per report under the graph and/or data.

We can now move on to the "Pages and File" section of the reporting module. You can see that the first report option is "Requested Pages." This report tells you the most frequently requested pages by your Web visitors. Most often the top page is your homepage but that is not always the case. On many other sites, the top page is a page that does well in search engines and people just go to that page directly from the engine. In this graph I have clicked on pieces of the pie to show you the explode effect. In addition you can see the page name as data below the graph and if you want more information, simply click on the little graph icon to the right of the data and you will be provided with the same data on a day-to-day basis.

Urchin gives you graphs and data for downloads requested, page query terms placed, and posted forms conducted as well.

Another important report is your "Status and Errors" report. Documenting the errors and statuses that are occurring on your site gives you the ability to implement changes and improve on bad error codes.

That now takes us to the section that reports on how your Web visitors are navigating throughout your Web site. I consider this section to be the most interesting and possibly the most valuable section of the basic Urchin module. If you can understand your users click patterns and see where they are dropping off, then you can implement changes to those pages and increase your conversion rates.

The first report within the navigation section is the "Entrance Pages" report. Where are people entering your site most? Most of the time, your top entrance page will be your homepage. But if you rank well for a specific keyword term and that keyword term takes you to an inside page, then you will see that page at the top of your entrance page. You want your top entrance pages to be the conduit to the pages or products you want your customers to visit. Use your top entrance pages well by putting links in visible areas to where you want them to go.

Statistically, your top entrance page will be your top exit page. Your goal will be to lower the ratio of exits to entrances for the page, to the smallest possible number. By adding "call to actions" on your top entrance pages, you can entice your Web visitor to make another click. Anything you can do to encourage that next click will be a victory for you. Later on, I will be discussing the Campaign Tracking Module (CTM). In the CTM discussion, I will be covering a lot of these concepts in detail.

Urchin gives you a number of ways to view your user's actions on your Web site. The next screen shot displays the "Click Paths" of the Web visitor. The most popular click paths are displayed first. You can then go deeper and deeper to see the least likely click paths of your user.

Urchin recently added a new report named "Click To and From" that gives you the patterns of how the user got to one page and went to the next page. For example, if you want to see how people are getting to your homepage you click on the little arrow icon and it pops open the window in the screen shot. It shows that most people just enter the homepage from their browser. Yet, the second most active way to get to the homepage is by actually refreshing the homepage. In addition, you can see what the person is most likely to do after they get to that page. In our example, most people simply exit the site. About 13% refresh the page and others view blog details.

The length of a pageview is an important statistic because you might want to see if people are actually reading the content on your pages versus clicking around without finding what they are looking for. The longer the pageview can mean a number of things, such as they have found what they are looking for and they are reading the content. It is important to take advantage of these pages as well and try to encourage a response from the user. This will help increase your success factor of your pages.

The depth of a users session can also provide meaningful insight into your Web site's navigation and design. With a Weblog, you will not see a deep click path. However, in regard to "rich content and product" sites, you will want to see a user go deep into your site. All usability and conversion specialists recommend to keep the click count (the number of clicks required to make a purchase) down to a minimum, many say 3 clicks is a good number. This report enables you to gauge this metric and make adjustments to your site to increase conversion rates and the usability of your Web site.

In addition to the depth of a session, Urchin gives you the ability to track the length of time per session that they are staying on your site. Depending on the site's purpose you will want the numbers to be higher or lower. This report gives you the answers you need to make informed decisions about your site's and page's layout and architecture.

That covers the navigation section of the basic Urchin module. Navigation patterns and behavior is a critical metric that must be measured for every serious Web site. If you are not currently measuring these metrics then you are walking in the dark. As mentioned above, I will be discussing the Campaign Tracking Module (CTM), which expands on many of these concepts.

Referrals, is the next major reporting section in the Urchin module. Referrals are a search engine optimizers dream statistic. Urchin does an excellent job summarizing and reporting on all types of referrals from direct hits, search engine driven traffic, directory driven traffic, and other referral driven traffic.

The screen shot displays the referrals ordered by most frequent. This is an easy way to see how the majority of your visitors are getting to your site. Some sites get all of their traffic from one place, whereas others get their traffic from many places. It is important to track referrals to see where traffic is coming from and where it is not coming from. Then you will be able to adjust your linking campaigns accordingly.

The next report, named "Referral Drilldown", groups the referrals by domain name. This is helpful to summarize which Web sites bring you the most traffic as a whole. This report differs from the report just mentioned above. The report above lists the pages that refer traffic to your site as compared to this report that lists the sites that refer traffic to your site. Pages are defined as individual html documents within a site, whereas a site contains multiple pages.

The next report named "Search Terms" report provides data on what keywords people are entering in to the search engines to find your site. This report is not grouped or filtered by a specific search engine. It is just a quick and easy way to see which search terms bring in traffic to your site. It is important to track this information in order to be able to change your keyword strategy for better quality keywords. Quality keywords are essential in order to bring relevant traffic to your site. If your keywords are unrelated to the service/product that your business offers then you are just wasting money on your monthly bandwidth bill.

The "Search Engine" report gives you a break down according to search engine. Firstly, it tells you which engines bring you the most traffic. Secondly, by clicking on the arrow for more information, it tells you which keywords are bringing in traffic for that specific engine. It is important to see which engines are driving traffic to your site. Based on what market share those search engines currently have, your traffic should be somewhat the same. If they are greatly skewed then you know your keyword optimization for certain engines are poor. For example, let us say Google has 30% market share, Yahoo! has 40% market share, and AskJeeves has 10% market share. It would be nice to see that 30% of your search engine driven traffic comes from Google, 40% from Yahoo! and 10% from AskJeeves. If the percentages look more like 40%, 40% and 1% then you know something is wrong. You will need to look at Teoma's engine (AskJeeves is powered by Teoma) and see what you can do to improve your rankings. AskJeeves also has more paid listings on a page then most search engines, so that is a factor as well. Yahoo! plans on switching its organic results from Google to Inktomi within the next month or two, will your site do well with the Inktomi engine powering Yahoo!? This is all-important information that can be derived from this report and other reports in Urchin.

That wraps up one of the most interesting sections of the Urchin reporting tool, referrals. Referrals detail how people are getting to your site, what keywords they query the search engines with, and which engines drive the most traffic to your site.

The next section discusses the domains and users, a section I personally do not spend much time analyzing. The domains report gives you the ability to track, which ISPs are providing the traffic to your site. Basically, this report tells you how many people are using AOL or another Internet Service Provider (ISP) as their Internet connection to visit your site. This does come in handy if you want to build a site that requires high-speed connections, which requires your user to have a high-speed ISP.

The "Countries" report details what geographic location your user is coming from. This statistics is very useful for large International sites and content sites. One major reason why one would track this information is to know if they should possibly offer the content on their site in multiple languages. If most of your traffic comes from the United States, then you should update your site's content based on that countries traffic patterns. In addition, your content should be United States focused and appeal to that cultural group.

The next report is named "IP Addresses." It gives you a break down of the most frequent sessions by IP address. Further more you can click on the IP address and Urchin will do a reverse lookup on the IP address to give you more information on that user. So when you find out your "friendly competitor" has been chewing up all your bandwidth by creating a robot that downloads all your product graphics, you can send that competitor a note or simply ban that IP address.

That sums up the "Domains and Users" section of the Urchin reporting module. The "Domains and Users" section allows you to track the ISPs and Countries that visit your site. In addition you can drill down into a users IP address and conduct a reverse IP lookup. One thing I did not cover was the username reporting, which is a simple report of the length and time a user logged into your Web site.

Another useful section of the reporting module is the "Browsers and Robots" section. This section gives you information on the type of browsers and computers your visitors are using to visit your site. In addition this section also gives you information about the different robots visiting your site. This report is named Browsers and it tells you which browser the visitors are using. From Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and the new Apple browser Safari. Web sites work differently on different browsers. It is therefore important to make your Web pages compatible with most of the available browsers. Which browsers, will depend on what you see in this report. Urchin also gives you the ability to drill down into a browser to see which version of that browser people are using. As most of you know, Web pages also work differently with the same browser but a different version.

The "Platforms" report provides information on the type of operating system the person is using to visit your site. This report drills down into the version of the operating system as well. And yes, Web pages work differently on different operating systems.

A fun and useful report for search engine optimizers is this "Robots" report. It summarizes which "robots" or "spiders" visit your site. SEO's use this report to ensure that the engines are visiting your site. If any robots are missing then you know you need to get them to visit your site some way and some how. In addition you can see which bots are most active. This report does not go into detail of which pages of your site the robots visited. There are plenty of free tools out on the Internet that can provide this detail, one is SpyderTrax by the founder of SEO Chat and can be downloaded at http://www.darrinward.com/.

That concludes the "Browsers and Robots" section of the Urchin Reporting Module. The next section is the last module included in the base Urchin license and it is called the "Client Parameters" report. The Client Parameters report requires that you place the UTM code on each of the page headers of your site. This allows Urchin to report on such attributes as screen resolution, screen colors, languages, Java, Time zones and JavaScript version information.

The first report you see below is the screen resolution report. How often do you ask yourself, if I was to do a redesign what size screen should the layout conform to? Most people just go with the standard 800X600 resolution. Yet, with this tool you are able to be able to be more creative.

The "Screen Colors" report is a nifty report that tells you whether your visitors have a 1 bit to 32 bit screen color settings. The languages report details the browser and computer language set by your Web site visitors, which helps you answer the question, should I make my content available in other languages? The Java Enabled report tells you the percentage of visitors that have Java enabled. The time zone report gives you information as to the visitor's time zone settings and the JavaScript report tells you the JavaScript version information.

That covers all the reporting available within the base Urchin license. It is powerful, easy to use and extremely useful information. The next reporting section discusses the new Urchin Campaign Tracking Module (CTM). I have not yet used all the features within this module but the CTM can be an incredible asset for any Web business looking to increase conversion rates through the use of metrics. The CTM is powerful enough to breakdown by sub campaign how well you are doing in dollars and in goal conversions. So if you do an email campaign you can track how well the different links in the email campaign convert. In addition you can track organic and paid search engine traffic and so much more.

Campaign Tracking Module »

Urchin 5.5 - Web Analytics Product Review Article Contents

- Overview of Important Web Analytic Features for the SEO
- Detailed Review of Urchin 5.5 and Campaign Tracking Module
   - Administrative Configuration
   - Reporting Review
   - Campaign Tracking Module
- SEO's Wish List to Urchin Developers & Web Analytics Companies
- Concept of Goal Based Funnel Analysis
- Web Analytics Article Wrap Up

- Back to SEO Articles

For more information on our search engine optimization and search engine placement services, please contact us at 877-GO-RUSTY or 845-369-6869 or via email at our contact page.