who's doing what on the web?

Last lesson we looked at web analytics, we looked at how using programs or google's own program you can see who's using your website, how they got there how long they spend on each page and how users navigate through your website. Unlike magazines you can see pretty much see every detail about how someone uses a website. This is ideally great for advertisers as they can see how well their advertisements do. It also shows how so many advertisers are choosing to advertise on the web over print today and it seems likely that this trend will continue. Not only are they able to see how well their advertisements are working, how long people are looking at a page for example and where they a clicking on to after but it also means that instead of spending huge amount paying to advertise in newspapers or magazines online advertising seems relatively cheap in comparison. although as it becomes more popular, prices will rise.

If for example you have a magazine in print and also online like most magazines have today, the use of web analytic technology means you can see what a user wants to read, most popular hits for example and how many people and from what region of the country or even what county they are from, as this technology reads where the ip address is coming from. In realistic terms it means you will have a better knowledge of your audience and you have evidence of what is working well and what isn't. You can also see whether people are coming direct to the site using the url or whether they are using search engines. This means if people are coming through search engines it may be important to make sure your website is high up on the google result. Optimising your google search result can be done by using google keyword tool. Using phrases and words you think people might be looking at it gives you other words to use that are most common among users giving you a better chance of moving up the google results list. Repetition of these keywords will be needed which is a huge difference from writing for any other medium. It seems quite difficult to repeat yourself a lot but without making the writing sound patronising. once we get our site live i think it would be good to keep checking the google analytics of the site so we can see how its being used and take advantage of it. If people are taking certain paths through the website or one topic is more popular than another it will help when adding new pieces to the site. Possibly adding different buttons on the home page to get attention and take the users another way.