Don't trust a single tracking program...

by DavidO
8 replies
I don't mean don't trust any of them... what I do mean is use more than one to confirm results.

I've used Statcounter.com for a couple years and it gives me lots of good data. But one thing that's been driving me nuts is their "visit length" stats. Mine always shows 70 to 85% of visitors leaving within 5 seconds!

That's pretty discouraging when you've tried everything but nudity to attact interest!

But I recently signed up for clicktale.com (fantastic tool, highly recommended!) and, lo and behold, I'm getting almost no sub-5-second visits! In fact, my typical visit length is measured in minutes, not seconds.

What a relief... I can trash that X-rated header I was working on!
#program #single #tracking #trust
  • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
    ITA,

    I am having an issue right now where I'm using a free tracker but it does not go back far enough in results.

    I needed to see ip's of who visited my blog on a particular date and the information was no longer available.

    If you can afford it, do a service upgrade.
    Signature

    "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[160820].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
      David

      They can only measure visit duration if the visitor moves from one tracked page to another.

      If your site has a long salesletter and someone spends 10 minutes reading it but doesn't click to another tracked page, that will show as a 5 second visit.

      In other words, it has no way of knowing how long they stayed on a page if that's the only page they looked at.

      Cheers,

      Neil

      Edit: Clicktale is different in that it uses Javascript to monitor what the visitor is doing with their mouse etc. So that's why they know how long the visitor stayed on the page. But normal stats trackers like StatCounter and Google Analytics use the method I described above.
      Signature

      Easy email marketing automation without moving your lists.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[160830].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author garyv
    Be careful about adding tracking to your webpages. While it's good to have confirmation tracking, your tracking in most cases needs to be low profile. There are some tracking softwares out there that will bog down your website. I learned this the hard way a few years ago.

    One of my websites took a sharp down-turn in sales, and follow thru traffic. It took me nearly 6 months to figure out that the tracking software I was using was somehow bogging down my website. I only found out, because I decided to completely remove the tracking, before updating the tracking software. My sales and traffic went immediately to previous levels. And to rule out coincidence, I re-installed the software only to find my sales plummet again. - So be careful.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[160860].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author DavidO
    Some very good points here...

    Neil, I didn't know that this is the fault behind my "quick" visitors. I've asked about this stat many times in this forum and you're the first one to explain it. thanks!

    The beauty of clicktale is that it shows you exactly how long a visitor stays, plus much much more, even if they just see the landing page. It also shows the page load time, which prevents the problem Gary mentions about hanging up your page loading.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[160984].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
      You're welcome.

      I tried ClickTale a few weeks ago but their Javascript broke my popup Javascript (which uses GreyBox) so I removed ClickTale sharpish.

      Cheers,

      Neil
      Signature

      Easy email marketing automation without moving your lists.

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[161012].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author clicktale
        Originally Posted by Neil Morgan View Post

        I tried ClickTale a few weeks ago but their Javascript broke my popup Javascript (which uses GreyBox) so I removed ClickTale sharpish.
        Hi,

        This is Arik from ClickTale.

        Neil, you are basically right about the way traditional analytics measure visit duration, though I suspect some employ a smart heuristic when they have missing data. I can't post a link, but if you Google "Time on Page and Time on Site - How Confident Are You?" you will get an article describing how GA approximates time on page/site.

        Curious to know more about the issue between ClickTale and GreyBox. Did ClickTale break the page for your visitors or was it that only the playback for the admin was broken? I can see how our playback will not support a DHTML popup without custom API code, but there should be no influence on the page at recording time. Please contact us with more information about this on our forum or via our contact-us form. I will greatly appreciate that!

        Regards,
        Arik.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[187514].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Hey David,

    I also use Statscounter.com and the 5 seconds data is also driving me nuts.

    I really think that this data in inaccurate because I am making a nice profit everyday from these visitors.

    So maybe this data is not accurate after all. Maybe these visitors are spending more then the 5 seconds.

    Tal
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[187743].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author homebse
    Thanks for this post and everyone's comments. I have been using a free service which is limited to 5 sites.

    I came to the WF to find a good tracking software replacement.

    I'll go check out clicktale.

    Thanks again,
    Jackie
    Signature

    I Work From Home and Love It!
    Car Seats For Baby
    View Credit Report

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[225754].message }}

Trending Topics