Here at Allyte, we’re big supporters of local churches and non-profit organizations. This month, Allyte is giving away a website (through our new product, called Speak) and 1 year of hosting to one church or non-profit organization. Winner to be announced September 17, 2011.

Do you know a church or non-profit that could use a website facelift? Enter them in the giveaway here!

Read part 1 of “How to Understand Google Analytics Reports” here.

Read part 2 of “How to Understand Google Analytics Reports” here.

The last part of this 3-part series on understanding Google Analytics covers the last five pages of the sample report [download it here]. Let’s start with the map overlay.

The map overlay section is a breakdown of the countries your website’s traffic is coming from. In the sample report, the majority of the traffic came from the United States. The numbers that follow show the amount of visitors from each country, the average time they spent on the website, what percentage of the visitors were new, and their bounce rate. You’ll also see the comparison to last month in the sample report.

This information is somewhat helpful in understanding where traffic comes from, but a customized report that drills down to a more local level would be more beneficial. The report can be configured to show this data, but it isn’t configured in the default Google Analytics report, as demonstrated in the example.

The next section down is titled “Content Overview”. This is one of my favorite sections of the report because it shows the most popular pages for the website. There is also a term here that we haven’t defined yet – “Unique Views”. Google defines unique views as “pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique view represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.” [source]

For this site, the home page is the most frequently viewed page on the site, which I suspect will be the case for the majority of websites. The report shows the number of pageviews for each page down the list, and the percentage of total pageviews this number represents. It is also compared to the last month’s pageviews to contrast traffic to the previous month.

Lastly, the “New vs. Returning” section breaks down visitor types by numbers. As you can see in this sample report, new visitors outweight returning visitors by a margin of only 54. In the previous month, however, new visitors took the title. If goals are configured in your Google Analytics dashboard, these numbers will also appear here. Google has a great article about getting these setup for your Analytics account.

The sample report we used as an outline for this series of articles is the default report available from Google Analytics. Analytics users can configure customized reports that offer information that is helpful for their specific website. The online dashboard for Analytics allows for interactive reporting, drilling down through the site to display numbers that are helpful in determining how to optimize your website. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series. The information found in these reports needs to be interpreted for the purposes and goals of your website.

Thanks for reading through the series – and happy number crunching!

If you are using Google Apps for your business or organization, you’ll want to be aware that Google is enabling a new addressing structure called IPV6 [wiki] on their websites tomorrow, Wednesday, June 8. There is some potential for problems, but most people will be okay. Below is the message I received from Google. I’ve added bold to one particular sentence that allows you to test your system now.

Dear Google Apps administrator,

On June 8th, 2011 — World IPv6 Day (http://worldipv6day.org/) — major web companies, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, will enable IPv6 on many of their websites for 24 hours to test how IPv6 performs in the real world.  That day, we’ll be using IPv6 (http://worldipv6day.org/faq/index.html) for Google Apps, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites.

More than 99.9% of people shouldn’t have any problems during this industry-wide test, but your experience on June 8th will depend on your computer and network configuration.
- If you only have IPv4, you’ll simply use IPv4 as usual and not see any test-related problems.
- If your configuration is ready for IPv6, you’ll automatically use IPv6 and not see any test-related problems.
- In rare cases if you have IPv6 enabled but not configured properly, you may have connectivity issues with Google Apps and other test sites on June 8th.

If you’d like to start checking your organization’s IPv6 preparedness before June 8th, you can instruct your users to visitipv6test.google.com from the devices where they access Google Apps, like primary work machines, tablet devices and home computers. If you discover IPv6 connectivity problems, you can find troubleshooting tips and more information here:http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=8995&answer=1299266

If you are having a major issue related to this from now until the end of June 8th, 2011 and need to contact us about IPv6, please submit your inquiry here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGx2UnV1RTdEY25HSlJ4VGQ2QW9jM2c6MQ.  We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you,
The Google Apps Team

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps account.

Google Analytics is one of the best website traffic tracking tools on the market. And it’s free, which makes it even better. If you have Google Analytics running on your site, at some point you’ll want to see a report related to the traffic on your site. The basic report that is produced for a certain period of time contains a ton of great information about your website traffic. Once you see this report, you may want an explanation of each section of the report. Here’s how to understand what you see.

If you don’t already have a Google Analytics report of your own, Google Analytics Sample Report so you can follow along.

Pages 1 & 2 – The Dashboard

This page is a general overview of the report. At the top left, you’ll see the website domain name. At the top right, you’ll see the date range for this report. If you have comparison reporting turned on for this particular report, it will show the date range that is the comparison.

The most visually impacting element on the first page is the traffic bar line graph. This shows a day-by-day graph of the traffic on your site. In the sample you downloaded above, the current month’s traffic is in blue. the comparison month’s traffic is in green.

Site Traffic

Just below the traffic bar graph is the general site usage numbers.

Site Usage

There are some terms here that need to be defined. The full glossary of terms is available here, but below are some important terms for this post:

• Visits – “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. For the purpose of Google Analytics reports, a session is considered to have ended if the user has been inactive on the site for 30 minutes. You can update this setting with an addition to our tracking code.” [source]
• 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.” [source]
  
  
• Pageviews – “Google Analytics logs a pageview each time the tracking code is executed. This can be an HTML or similar page with tracking code being loaded by a browser, or a call to _trackPageview() to simulate a pageview.” [source]

• Pages/Visit – The number of pages a visitor viewed in a single visit or session.
• 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.” [source]
• Average Time on Site – The amount of time a visitor remained on the site during a visit or session.
• New Visits/Visitor – “Google Analytics records a visitor as new when any page on your site has been accessed for the first time by a web browser. This is accomplished by setting a first-party cookie on that browser. Thus, new visitors are not identified by the personal information they provide on your site, but are rather uniquely identified by the web browser they used.” [source]
• Returning Visits/Visitor – “Google Analytics records a visitor as ‘returning’ when the _utma cookie for your domain exists on the browser accessing your site.” [source]

You’ll also see a map overlay that is a visual representation of the geographical areas your visitors are coming from.

Near the bottom of the first page, you’ll see a traffic sources overview that is a pie chart of the ways people find your website. This is broken down into three types of traffic sources – search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc), direct traffic (typing your domain name into the web browser), and referring sites (clicking on a link from another website to yours).

Traffic Sources

On page two, you’ll see New vs. Returning visitor types. These terms are defined above. Next to this column, you’ll see content overview on the right side of page 2. This is a list of the most popular pages on your site during the report period, in descending order.

Now, how do you make sense of all this information?

This basic information is a good way to keep a thumb on how people are using your website. It indicates how long people stay with the site once they arrive. If the time spent on the site is very brief, it may be time to consider changing the content or navigation of the site to make it more appealing for people to stay on the site. If people find the site through direct traffic, but not through search engines, it may be worth the effort to invest some time in optimizing the website for search engines so the site can be indexed properly.

These numbers are indicators of how people interact with you online. If you have 2,000 visitors, but no contacts from those visitors, perhaps a better call to action or contact method should be in place. The numbers are great for tracking your progress and measuring success for your website.

Most importantly, the numbers outlined in the report will need to be interpreted for your organization. A non-profit organization will have different priorities for their website than a bluegrass band will have for theirs. When interpreting these numbers, you may be faced with the task of establishing goals and setting priorities for the website that are in line with the goals and priorities of your organization.

That covers the first section of the Google Analytics report. Any questions?

When Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee was ready to upgrade their website, they wanted something that was visually attractive and easy to manage from anywhere. Allyte recommended a Joomla 1.5 CMS and left the design choice in their hands. In the end, the team chose a RocketTheme design because of its visual impact and feature set. Take a look at the final product below.

SequoyahChurch.org

The original article appeared in the May/June 2011 issue of Cityview Magazine. The version here is complete with links and a little more information than was in the original.

The convergence of technology, media in particular, is effecting the way people worldwide do business, socialize, gather information, make connections, and draw conclusions.

Watch this video, then ask yourself: How do I use these tools connect with those around me?

Description from YouTube:

This is another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visithttp://mediaconvergence.economist.com and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.

Credits:

Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Music by DoKashiteru, “Home Tonight.” Design and development by XPLANE, http://www.xplane.com.You can follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/xplane

Leaving your computer and its data with a service or repair center can be a little nerve-racking. Your data – email, pictures, music, documents, spreadsheets, presentations – are all contained on this computer and you don’t want it to be vulnerable.

Some service centers will wipe a hard drive clean without thinking twice. When your computer returns to you, it has returned completely to factory settings. A side note – there are some good services available for home and office data backup. They do cost on the front end, but save a ton of time, trouble, and possibly money in the event you need your data restored.

In other cases, the customer may arrive to pickup the computer, only to find exorbitant fees are due for the service. It would have been better to replace the laptop than pay the fees for repair.

To prevent situations like this, there are some key questions you should ask before leaving your computer for repair.

1. Will you backup my data before doing work that could compromise it?
2. What is the fee for doing a backup for me?
3. Will I receive a copy of my data if you wipe the hard drive clean?
4. What are the estimated charges for this repair? Can I get that in writing?
5. If the charges are significantly more than you estimate, will you let me know before doing the work?

This set of questions is a good place to start when getting service on a laptop or desktop computer. Depending on your service request, you may want to ask more questions.

For good data backup solutions, look at Dropbox, Cobian Backup, ElephantDrive, JungleDisk, Carbonite, and Mozy.

For good computer repair and service, look no further than Allyte Technology Solutions.

Today the new iOS4 is released for Apples iPhone and iPad. This is a free upgrade. I love free stuff. There are some great new features you should know about in this update.

Here are just a few:

• Multitasking
• Folders
• Improved Email
• iBooks

If you’re ready to update to iOS4, be sure to use iTunes to backup your iPhone/iPod/iPad first. Then check for updates. When the update is available, iTunes will let you know and walk you through the process. I was able to upgrade a little early, thanks to these instructions from Jason Powell.

An excellent walkthrough of the features of iOS4 is in the video below.

If you remember in “How to Secure Your Windows PC – Part 1“, I wrote about market share. I mentioned Windows, Macintosh and Linux, all as having market share. I said that Windows was targeted because of its market share and that both Macintosh and Linux were prone to viruses as well, but that they weren’t targeted as heavily.

Most people think that if they don’t get a Windows computer, they have to get a Macintosh computer. Usually the decision goes something like this: “Do I pay less for a Windows computer now and take my chances with maintenance costs or do I pay more up-front and get the attractive, reliable Macintosh?”

I want to suggest a third alternative: What if you could purchase the Windows computer, but get the reliability of the Macintosh?

The way to accomplish this is by using Linux.

I will say up-front that this solution is not for everyone. When considering a switch to Linux, here are some things to keep in mind:

• There will be a bit of a learning curve to switch from Windows to Linux (but wouldn’t there be a learning curve with a Macintosh, anyway?).
• You may have to find replacements for your software (but wouldn’t you have to replace software with a Macintosh, anyway?).
• There are not exact replacements for some software (like the iTunes Store).

There are some wonderful benefits to using Linux, however.

• Vast library of free software at your fingertips
• Lower maintenance costs – it “just works”
• No issues and hassle with licensing/registration/activation
• Largely compatible with the major functions of a Windows or Macintosh computer

I have been a Linux-only user for the last four years and have had a great experience with it. I used Linux through my last 2 years of a Master’s degree and had few, if any issues. I am confident in the current state of Linux and its ability to offer a solid computing platform.

Get in touch with me about switching to Linux. I’m glad to offer suggestions and tips for getting started.