The Value of Web Statistics Page II

Graph of daily usage

Shows at a glance how usage is changing on a day-by-day basis.

Questions answered:

• Has recent training and marketing increased intranet usage?
  By keeping a close eye on the daily summaries, you can assess how successful your training and marketing is.

  If you send out a poster advertising a new feature on the intranet, you would expect to see a 'spike' in intranet usage for the next few days. Likewise, training should generate an increase in usage, although perhaps at a slower rate.

• How heavily used is the intranet?
• Is the usage growing, or falling?

Daily Statistics for November 2000
Day	Hits		Files		Pages		Visits		Sites		KBytes
1	189	0.92%	23	0.25%	11	0.50%	3	1.30%	2	28.57%	138	0.40%
2	638	3.11%	73	0.79%	68	3.08%	10	4.33%	4	57.14%	658	1.89%
3	716	3.49%	185	1.99%	209	9.47%	12	5.19%	2	28.57%	2385	6.84%
4	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	0	0.00%	0	0.00%
5	310	1.51%	79	0.85%	43	1.95%	6	2.60%	3	42.86%	407	1.17%

Table of daily usage

This shows the same information as the previous graph, but in a tabular format.

Questions answered:

• How much load is the intranet placing on the network?
• How heavily used is the intranet?
• Is the usage growing, or falling?

Graph of hourly usage

Summarises the usage of the intranet on a hourly basis.

Questions answered:

• When during the day is the intranet used?

Top 30 of 221 Total URL's
#	Hits		KBytes		URL
1	412	2.01%	5087	14.60%	/
2	111	0.54%	602	1.73%	/Admin/NewPage/
3	40	0.20%	213	0.61%	/Help/
4	31	0.15%	170	0.49%	/Projects/
5	26	0.13%	567	1.63%	/Resources/Tech/

Top URLs

The most popular pages on the intranet. Many stats packages also allow the number of hits to be determined for any page on the intranet, not just the most popular pages.

Questions answered:

• What are the most popular pages?

• There is important information on the intranet. Is it being read?
  Are the important pages at the top of this list, or at the bottom? Clearly, you would like the important pages (such as company news, etc) to be frequently read. If this is not happening, consider either:
  • Re-designing the intranet to increase the prominence of the pages.
  • Marketing these pages more heavily to your users.

• Can users make sense of the intranet?
  This is a hard question to answer. Web statistics will not provide you with the complete answer, but may give you some clues when used in conjunction with user surveys and usability testing.

  If the overall use of the intranet is low, and restricted to only a few sections, this should give you the hint that users are struggling with the design or implementation of the intranet.

  When you make changes to the design or structure of the intranet, keep a close eye on the intranet usage. This will help you assess whether the changes were successful.

• Is the intranet navigation working?
  If only a very few sections of the intranet are being used, it is safe to say that your users haven't been able to find the useful information located in other areas of your intranet.

Top 30 of 221 Total URL's By KBytes
#	Hits		KBytes		URL
1	412	2.01%	5087	14.60%	/
2	1	0.00%	1009	2.90%	/Resources/Tech/Drivers/NVidia/532nt.zip
3	26	0.13%	567	1.63%	/Resources/Tech/
4	2	0.01%	482	1.38%	/Resources/Tech/Netscape/N6Setup.exe
5	6	0.03%	288	0.83%	/Resources/TimeSheets/TimeSht4.pdf

Top URLs by size

The pages on the intranet generating the most downloaded information.

Questions answered:

• What pages are generating the most network traffic?

Conclusion

There is no excuse for not knowing how your intranet is being used. The benefits gained from using web statistics are considerable, and both commercial and freeware stats packages are easily obtained.

Through effective use of common off-the-shelf web statistics packages, you can gain invaluable information about intranet usage. These details can then be used to:

• improve the design of your intranet
• enhance the effectiveness of your training and marketing
• increase the number of users reading vital information
• ensure that users can actually use the intranet

As a final note, web statistics can be very useful when you need to justify the existence of the intranet, or when requesting further funding. It is a great help to be able to say: "The intranet is successful: there are over 10,000 hits per day!". Of course, if the usage is larger than this, more the better.

More information

The examples used in this article were generated using Webalizer, a completely free web statistics package that generates both comprehensive and attractive reports. (Webalizer is used in Illumination, our intranet product.) You can find Webalizer at:

• http://www.webalizer.com/

Information on other web statistics packages available can be found on the following websites:

• Yahoo: Log Analysis Tools
• HTTPD Log Analyzers
• CNET Builder: Analyze your web site traffic