I have tried for 2 weeks to get Fusestats to work on this site and it has been nothing but frustrating. After signing up for the service I though I was off to a smooth start. I added some javascript to the site the reports show that data was beginning to be collected and I figured in the next day or so I would be able to really start to dig in and try out the the heat-map tracking. On day 2 I decided to log in to get a view what data had been collected. I logged in, and made to my account dashboard and was quickly greeted with the message ”No Data to Display”:, I was convinced something was wrong but maybe it was just to soon. So I went to try the heat map reporting. I was really only testing this out for the heat-maps anyways.

So I moved on and tried the heat-maps where I was then presented with another excellent message: “The page you have requested has encountered an error.” OK, at this point I am thinking, perhaps it is still too soon. Let me give it a couple more days. So I waited a couple of days and logged back in. Ah-Ha, clicking on the “Real-Time” link shows that it is collecting data. Now we are getting somewhere. Time to try the heat maps. I click on the heat maps link and I am logged out and presented with a username and password prompt.  That’s OK, little glich, let me just log back in. I get back in to the user account dashboard click heat-maps and I am logged out again. What the hell… After doing this about 5 times I figure something blew up and my account is corrupted.  I spend way too much time reading the support pages and checking to make sure I have Cookies working etc…etc… and still no luck. I submit a contact form asking for help and guess what, I received an error.

At this point I have already wasted too much time but I am also thoroughly invested so I want to get this thing working so that all this time isn’t actually wasted. Figuring that the account is somehow corrupt I create a whole new account set up the tracking all over again and wait , test the access to the account, make sure that it is collecting data again and wait again. So today I log in with my new account certain that I will finally be able to test out he heat map features. Guess what… Nothing but Errors. Again it says no data and The page you have requested has encountered an error. And of course, to quickly log out all I had to do was click on the heat map link.

So In short, if this is a real product it isn’t finished yet. Take down your site, apologize to the people whose time you have wasted and get your application working.

Now that that is out of the way. Can anyone recommend a good heat map tracking solution?

I was forwarded a link to www.crazyegg.com  today. I have always followed Marketing Sherpa heatmap research and use the built in click map tracking in Google Analytics, but I have never really tested heatmap tracking on my sites. It looks interesting but not worth paying for until I see the benefits.  So is it worth it? Has anyone tried it? What insights has heatmap tracking shown you? 

While looking around for a free heatmap tracking service I came across www.fusestats.com. This is more of a full feature reporting service but they do offer a free subscription level that may produce some actionable info. So I am testing fusestats on this site for the next week to see what happens.  Look for a followup on heatmap tracking once I start getting some data recorded.

 As a follow up to the previous post on Competitive Intelligence for online markeitng I put together a chart that compares the services of Alexa, Compete.com, Quantcast, Hitwise, Comscore and Neilsen Netratings.

Compare Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, Hitwise, Comscore, Neilsen Netrankings

Alexa, Alexa, Alexa…

www.Alexa.com

Not a week goes by that I do not have someone bring up Alexa reporting and say that is says so and so is getting more traffic than so and as so. People/competitors/consultants refer to Alexa traffic reporting as a justification for some of the services or products they are recommending. For those of you not familiar with Alexa, it is a website traffic measuring service that aims to provide free competitive intelligence to the masses.

My problem with Alexa is that it’s data is far from accurate. I am not going to get int to a rant about the inaccuracies as more than enough people have already exposed these issues.

Here are a few examples:
http://www.thenetfool.com/when-alexa-attacks/
http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/utilities/alexa/
http://www.e-consultancy.com/forum/101280-how-accurate-is-alexa-for-traffic-measurement.html

Why is it inaccurate?
Ok, I lied I’m going to rant.

The short story is that it only tracks web traffic from people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. Do you have it installed? I don’t and I do not know anyone that does. So anyone that does not have the Alexa toolbar installed will not be counted in the website traffic. Of course if you install the Alexa widget into your site than it can more accurately track your websites traffic.

But why add the widget/tracking to your site? Who cares about what Alexa says? Well Alexa makes it’s traffic data public including the traffic data about your website. So if you do not have the tracking widget installed you will look like you are getting less traffic than a website that has this tracking installed..

So the logic here is; include the Alexa tracking widget or we will shame you by displaying innacurate data about your site. Data that will most likely make it appear that your online efforts are falling short comapred to competitors. The uninformed marketer often sees a reference to Alexa report and gets worried that their online efforts are failing. For this, Alexa, you are doing more harm than good.

Don’t get me wrong Alexa is an entertaining product and if luck is on my side and shows that my sites are getting more traffic than competitors, it puts a smile on my face. But that is as useful as it gets.  I certainly would not build any strategy around Alexa reporting.

Compete.com

Compete
Compete seemed to have started out with the same agenda as Alexa but has morphed into a slightly more useful tool. Sure it’s traffic reporting is still very much an estimate. Currently their sample size is 2 million US Internet users. Unlike Alexa it collects data via toolbars, surveys, Aggregate data from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like AOL* and Comcast* and Applications Service Providers (ASPs) Like web mail*.

So, they are getting a broader mix of internet users in their sample and I would trust Compete.com over Alexa.com but still wouldn’t make any important decision based solely on their reports.

*AOL COMCAST and web mail are examples of ISPs and ASPs  only and are note  necessarily associated with Compete.com

Quantcast

How accurate is Quantcast data? Well, it collects data via a mix of sources similar to Compete.com. Sources include  advertisers, publishers, ISPs and advertising networks. It’s “Media Planner” service is still branded as beta but looks very promising so far.

Professional Competitive Services.
Aside from the services mentioned above there are pay services that can can collect much more targeted information. The three big companies in this space are Comscore, Hitwise and Neilson Netrating. These service are excellent, but very expensive for a small business. Usually in the tens of thousands of dollars per year.  My experience with these services have revealed that they are most useful for major Internet brands and and large business. When it comes to a small website or a local brand for a small to medium sized business, there just isn’t enough data to reveal anything more than what Compete or Quantcast.

Check back for a more detailed comparison of these companies.

What are your experiences with these services? Is there another you would recommend?

Recently I was asked to look over a friend’s company web traffic for “fun”. I was happy to do it out of curiosity and to be helpful. They asked me to review the traffic because they were unsure of what they were seeing and after reviewing it myself I am not sure what I am looking at either.

While poking through the stats I noticed that 75% of their traffic was direct. As in 3 out of 4 of their website visitors landed on the site by punching in the domain perfectly. This seemed odd so I compared it to some other sites I have managed that are similar in size and industry and marketing efforts. What I saw was that typically each site has a more distributed source list of referral sources. Typically 40-45% percent of referral traffic coming from Search Engines, 25-35 % direct traffic and the remainder from other websites.

Digging deeper I noticed that the bounce rate for the site was quite high. (On average 75% or greater)
Hmm, 75% of the traffic is direct and 75% or more of the visitors leave immediately regardless of the page they entered the site on. Something is not right here.

To gather more information I looked at what sites out there were referring traffic. I found one or two paid referrals / purchased a banner advertisement which was expected, but beyond that I found hundreds of random websites driving traffic to this website. So I wanted to see what these sites were.  They were clearly spam sites, porn sites and sites displaying nothing but Google ad sense.

So here is the questionable data:

•  75% of all traffic is direct (this is not a big internet brand but a small local business with basic SEO in place)
• 75% or greater bounce rate on every page
• The slim search engine traffic it does receive is only coming from MSN (This is strange considering the small market share of MSN compared to Google or Yahoo.)
• Overall Traffic, in terms of visit session is up about 60% this year.
  Of course the client is happy to see the higher traffic numbers but based on what we are seeing is this traffic real?

My initial thoughts are that one of the following is happening:

1.  This is a poor linking strategy / scam – meant to boost website traffic figures but without regard for traffic quality.
2. The reporting is set up incorrectly- This is possible and it would explain the high numbers for direct traffic and the high bounce rate. However, it does not explain the odd referring websites
3. This is site is a true anomaly – receiving a lot of direct traffic from people that did not want to visit the site and leave immediately.

Based on what I have seen in the reporting and what I know of the company managing this site, I believe this is a paid linking strategy boosting traffic number but harming the clients brand and understanding of their own efforts.

If anyone has any similar experiences let me know. Have you seen website traffic referral distributions like this before? Are these stats telling tale signs of paid linking? Can anyone explain how a site indexed in all major search engines only receives traffic from MSN?