 Most marketers would probably say that they know their Web site fairly well. They understand how to get around on the site and where the major conversion points are. They probably know the little usability problems that bother everyone (and never get fixed because everyone puts up with them) and what pages are most popular.
In turn, this should mean that they’re able to understand how to analyze user behavior on their Web site with the help of Web analytics software. This may be true in many cases, but to really know your Web site, to really use Web analytics, you also need to understand more than just the look and feel of the Web site; you need to know how your Web site works from a technical level. This means getting to know your URLs.
The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) has a lot of technical nuance to it. At a high level, a URL is an address for a specific resource on the internet. From the perspective of Web analytics, this resource is basically a Web page, but it can also be an image or a PDF. The URL is built from a few distinct components and all of them are important for a marketer to understand. In a series of posts over the next several weeks I’ll go into some specific examples of how understanding URLs helps to get the most from Web analytics.
Today, I’ll prime the pump by describing some general ideas and posing some of the problems that Web analytics users might encounter.
First, let’s dissect a URL. Here’s one we can use:
http://www.top5flicks.com/browse-categories/comedy/index.cfm?c=128&i=113&id=ses10cl333
A URL can be broken into the following components:
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the Internet protocol:
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http://
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the domain name:
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www.top5flicks.com
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the path and filename:
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/browse-categories/comedy/index.cfm
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the query string, or query parameters:
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?c=128&i=113& id=ses10cl333
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The Internet Protocol
The internet protocol doesn’t come into play very often. The basic options are ‘http’ or ‘https’. The second protocol specifies a secure page. Learn more about internet protocols on Wikipedia.
The Domain Name
The domain name basically defines ‘the Web site’. In this case, the Web site, top5flicks.com is defined by the domain ‘www.top5flicks.com’. Each period in the domain name actually represents a different level of the domain. This is important because sub-domains, like sales.top5flicks.com or support.top5flicks.com are not necessarily part of the same Web site. When you set up your Web analytics account, be sure to include any sub-domain that belongs to your Web site. There’s no technical direction here – you have to know your site, know how customers think of your site and understand how you want to analyze your site in order to set this up properly.
The Path and File Name
The path and file name represent a unique path to a file that is used on your Web site. They’re the bread and butter of Web analytics. In a basic, well structured Web site, this information can tell you a lot about what to expect on each page – which makes Web analytics much easier. For example, a path such as: /sports/football/teams/saints.html is probably going to display a page about the New Orleans Saints. We can also guess that there are more pages like that one for other football teams and probably teams for other sports. Each technical implementation of a Web site is different, though, and some are easier to understand than others.
The Query Parameters
The path and file name alone are not always enough to define a unique Web page. This is where the query string or query parameters come in. They aren’t strictly required by all Web sites, but for some sites query parameters specify the exact page and information that need to be displayed. In addition to page defining parameters, some Web sites also include parameters that identify the visitor and maintain session information as the visitor moves from page to page. Understanding how query parameters are used on your site is one of the most important ways to get the most useful information from Web analytics. More on that topic to come.
Next time, we’ll look at how URL pruning can be used to modify the URLs of your Web site so that you can get the most out of your Web analytics.
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Related Resources:
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