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!

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

Your Google Analytics report contains great information about visitors to your website that can assist in optimizing your site for the end-user. Let’s jump straight in. If you downloaded the Google Analytics Sample Report, we’re looking at page 3, titled “Visitors Overview”.

Again, the report includes a line graph to visualize the visitor breakdown by day and a contrasting color comparison to the previous month. It’s very similar to the line graph on page 1.

Below this graph is the breakdown of visitors to the site with a comparison to the previous month. Much of this information is duplicated from the previous 2 pages, but I want to make a point about absolute unique visitors.

We defined “visits” in part 1 of this series, but the next statistic down is “absolute unique visitors”. Here’s the meaning of the term, as defined by Google:

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.

This represents, possibly more accurately, the number of devices that have accessed your device, rather than the actual number of people. It can be assumed that a single individual will access the same sites from a work computer as they would a home computer or mobile device. Each of these devices is registered as an “absolute unique visitor” according to Google’s definition.

Below this absolute unique visitors statistic is a summary of the usage of your site, most of which was outlined in Part 1 of this series.

Next down the line is the Technical Profile section. This is where you’ll find numbers about the internet browsers and connection speeds being used to access your site. This information is important because if most of your users are using Internet Explorer to access your website (and I suspect they are), you’ll need to test the website using Internet Explorer for compatibility and display issues. The connection speed can also have an impact on the end-user’s experience of your website. If most users are on a dial-up connection, a flash-intensive or graphics-heavy website is not going to offer a good user experience, and will likely cause your bounce rate to decrease.

The Traffic Sources Overview section of the report provides information about how people find your website. Google defines traffic sources in three ways:

1. Direct traffic – the visitor has typed your website address into the address bar of their browser.
2. Referring sites – the visitor clicked on a link from a third-party website to access yours.
3. Search engines – the visitor searched for a certain term or terms and found your website in the results.

The report even includes a nice little pie chart to visualize this data.

Below this visualization on the left side are the numbers for the most popular traffic sources for your site. Depending on how you want people to find your website, these numbers are helpful for optimizing the website’s performance on search engines or advertising platforms. If your only form of marketing is handing out business cards with the web address, then direct traffic may be your top source. On the other hand, if your website is real estate, you’ll probably want great results with search engines.

Speaking of search engines, the right side column of pages 5 and 6 are the search terms visitors have used to search and find your website. This information is helpful in determining if people are actually finding what they are searching for when they arrive at your website. For example, let’s say you own Pisa Pizza, an online retailer that sells pizza kits. The keywords you want to see in this list are “Pisa Pizza”, “pizza”, and “pizza kit”. If people aren’t finding your website through these search terms, it’s time to improve your website’s search engine optimization.

That’s it for part 2 of “How to Understand Google Analytics”. Part 3 will come later this week.

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?

You’ll need two things to stream Tennessee sports audio to your iPhone.

The first is an app that can use an audio source. FStream is a good one. Find it and install it on your iPhone.

The second is an audio stream source. Use this source:

http://st1.webradioworld.net/tunein.php/wecofm/playlist.asx

Now, four steps:

1. Copy the source from above.
2. Open FStream and go to Favorites.
3. Click “Edit”, then “Add new webradio”.
4. Give it any name you want, paste the source into the URL field. Encoding doesn’t matter. Hit save.

That’s it. Now, you can go to the Play tab of the FStream app and click on the stream. It should start right away. I have a solid stream even on a weak Edge connection on AT&T.

Finding a trustworthy place to get your computer repaired can be a difficult thing to do. Some shops want to keep your computer for weeks at a time, cutting down on your productivity. Others have you wait in a long line just to drop off the computer. It can be a frustrating experience just to talk with someone about your ailing computer.

There is a better solution. Allyte Technology Solutions repairs computers in Knoxville and Maryville, Tennessee. We provide friendly, personal, cost-effective computer service at your location. On-site service allows us to ensure the computer works properly and eliminates the hassle of dealing with messy cables and wires.

Call Allyte Technology Solutions for in-home or in-office computer service. You won’t be disappointed.

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.

In “How to Secure Your Windows PC – Part 1“, we established that Windows PCs are often targeted because of their large market share and that the brand of your computer makes no difference because viruses, spyware and malware occur at the software level.

In “How to Secure Your Windows PC – Part 2“, we considered browsing and clicking habits that can be harmful for your computer and your privacy.

Let’s look at two different types of software that can help protect your computer.

Internet Security Suite

There are some tools available that can help secure your Windows PC as well. A question that is often asked of me is, “Which antivirus software is the best?“. My answer is always, “I can recommend a certain product, but you need to know that no security software is bulletproof. They will all let some things get through.”

It’s important to understand that antivirus software offers only a certain type of protection. So if you go to download one of the free anti-virus software packages (AVG, Avast!, and Avira are all popular), they will offer anti-virus only protection. In order to get a quality level of comprehensive protection from a single piece of software, you’ll need to pay for it.

PC Magazine has a good run-down of the best software for 2010 here. They rate Norton and McAfee above the rest of the suites in this particular review. On more than one occasion, however, I have had major software issues with both McAfee and Norton, so I typically recommend another software package.

In my experience, Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 offers the best value, features and pricing. I use this software with many of my clients and have had good results without inhibiting the computer’s performance. It’s around $80, which covers three computers for a full year. Contact me to get this software installed on your computer.

Consistent Environment Software

Wouldn’t it be great if your computer was exactly the same every time you turned it on? One software package makes that happen.

Windows Steady State, developed by Microsoft allows a computer’s administrator to configure other users for a consistent environment on every login. It’s free and compatible with Windows XP and Vista (sorry, Windows 7 users!).

Basically, here’s how it works: a user can login, browse the internet, download files and even adjust settings just like usual. Then when they log out, all the settings revert back to the way they were before the person logged in. This software is very useful on a computer that a family with children may use, or in my case, a computer lab with multiple users.

Other helpful features of this software are timed logouts, software restrictions, and user permissions. If these sounds fancy, I assure you that Windows Steady State makes it very easy to understand and adjust these settings.

With a little common sense and the right software, your Windows PC should operate smoothly without much effort on the part of the user. It may not be bulletproof, but the overall experience will be better than if no protection or safeguards were put in place.

There is one option still to consider when using a PC. We’ll take a look at that in Part 4.

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In “How to Secure Your Windows PC – Part 1“, we established that Windows PCs are often targeted because of their large market share and that the brand of your computer makes no difference because viruses, spyware and malware occur at the software level.

To protect your Windows computer, the first and best rule of protection is to use your head and be pro-active in your browsing and clicking habits. This typically means two things:

1. Only visit websites that you know can be trusted
2. Use caution when clicking on links in e-mail that are unsolicited

Let’s look a little closer at #1:
How do you know which websites can be trusted? There is a difficult tension here – if you visit only the sites you already know, there are many useful and informational websites out there that you will miss in an effort to be cautiuos. But, if you go out willy-nilly and click on every site that comes up in the search results, your computer will get infected with malicious software sooner or later.

So the answer lies somewhere in between. More experienced users can take a little more liberty in clicking on unknown sites, but naive or less experienced users will need to be more careful when visiting unknown websites.

The truth is that malicious websites will do their best to look like a legitimate, reputable website. But these same sites will do damage to your computer that can be difficult to recover from.

Let’s look a little closer at #2:
E-mail is also a popular way to direct people to websites that are harmful not only to your computer, but to your privacy. If you get an e-mail from a financial institution, never click on the link in the e-mail. Instead, go to your browser to access the institution’s site directly.

It is very possible that the legitimate-looking e-mail you just received will direct you to  a “phishing” site that will extract your login information and allow someone else to access your accounts and information.

In Part 3, we’ll consider two types of software that can help protect your computer from viruses and spyware.

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If you’re looking for some space online to meet, look no further than DimDim. This free web service with a funny name offers a comprehensive package for meeting online.

Here are a few highlights:

• No software installation necessary – DimDim runs completely in your browser
• Desktop Sharing
• Use your webcams and microphones for video and conversation
• Record and embed meetings
• Social media integration

A complete run-down of the feature set is available here.

As mentioned above, a free version is available that allows up to 20 users and 1 webcam. Premium, paid packages are available, too. Here is a full-comparison of the packages.

Give DimDim a try for your next online meeting.