Posts tagged Google Analytics

I have not been blogging regularly for a while now, and I can see the results of that on the blog stats. I have now below 200 readers a day. So when slowly coming back to updating my blog, I have decided to follow more closely what my readers most often search for and actually read.

To do be able to get more information about what my readers, I am changing from only using the WordPress plugin WordPress.com Stats to collect data from Google Analytics, to read the data directly on the Google Analytics website. But if you are new to blogging, I must say that WordPress.com Stats has been a great starting point. But as you get more with reading blog stats, you would like to dive in to the incredible depth of information that Google Analytics provides. Another limitation with WordPress.com Stats is that it makes heavily use of Flash to present the data, and these presentations are therefor not available on the iPhone.

If you are new to both WordPress.com Stats and Google Analytics, you should know that Google Analytics is a powerful tool for webmasters that provides a very useful insight into a website’s traffic. The service allows the website owner to track the referrals, search engine keywords, ads, email promotions as well as offline initiatives that brought the said visitors to your site.

Now Google publishes the data it collects as a standard XML data. That led me to thinking that there might be an iPhone application that can make use of it and format it to iPhone small screen. And there sure was! I found two-three apps, and fast decided to Analytics App. For $5.99US, this application is a keeper. Up-to-date stats from all of your sites, whether you’re on the road, in a meeting, or sitting on the tram on your way to or from work, Analytics App gives you quick and easy access to your analytics data. And why buy the app? Cause it is so much more convenient to use then from within Safari.

You’ll find yourself checking your stats with Analytics App not only on the go, but at your desk as well! But more important Analytics App can make any spare moment a productive moment. How many leads did you get today? What keywords were hot this month? What content brought in the most conversions?

The application Analytics App is well designed and fast, whilst retaining all of the important functionality of Google Analytics – namely tracking just how popular you are! It supports multiple accounts (websites), stats all over the joint, and has a beautifully presented plotted graph analysis.

I have only been using Analytics App for a few days. One of the first things I checked was what browsers and operating systems people were using. After a week I can say that there are only four operating systems in use among the visitors of frankps.net: Windows, Linux, MacOS X and iPhone. No visitors using BeOS or Haiku. When it comes to browsers, there are just as many visitors using Firefox as Internet Explorer. The are quite a few Safari users, and on the bottom you’ll find a few people using Chrome and Opera. But far more important then the hits of browsers and hits in general, is time spent on site. Have the visitors actually read the article? Have they clicked to other articles that you have linked up? Where did they go from your site? And how did they get there? Average time spent on site can be quite a shock for a few of us …

One thing I have not found out with Analytics App is why on Earth is the data presented in Norwegian? The OS and the app itself are both in English.