Your Guide to Site Traffic Analysis Using Webtrends Analytics

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1 Guide Your Guide to Site Traffic Analysis Using Webtrends Analytics Are You Obsessed With Traffic? As a data-driven marketer or analyst, you need to know which channels and campaigns are driving visitors to your digital properties. But, when it comes to traffic, more isn t necessarily better. How is your marketing really measured? With the right data, and the right reporting and metrics, you can learn about the ways people find your site(s), know which programs are delivering the best conversion rates and understand which of your investments are delivering ROI. The following guide covers best practices on traffic source analysis and outlines using parameters and reporting to help you get the data you need to truly gauge the success of your marketing efforts. Measuring Success While we all want traffic to our sites, generally the ultimate goal is to engage with your audience and get them to take action. That means you need quality traffic, people interested in what you have to offer and who convert by buying a product, filling in a form, etc. Webtrends Analytics reports can help you analyze which channels are driving more traffic during specific time frames. Through analytics reports, or by drilling into your data on-the-fly with Webtrends Explore, you can also look at indicators for traffic quality, such as how long visitors stayed on the page and bounce rates. While there are standard categories that help you understand referring source, it can be helpful to go beyond standard buckets like Other Campaigns, Organic and Paid Search. By overriding standard parameters, you may be able to better gauge the success of your efforts. For example, if you re running an campaign, you could override the traffic source parameter to allow the dimension to report . 1

2 Choose the Right Parameter Traffic Analysis Best Practices Develop a naming standard upfront and follow for all campaigns consistently Ensure full team participation and consistency Educate team on the basics of tagging and your chosen structure/ approach Keep traffic source simple use campaign IDs for greater detail Don t mix sources and campaigns if you use as a source, don t use it as a campaign ID too Avoid overkill if you ve got hundreds of media sources, consider how you can up-level categorization to channel type or region or vertical When it comes to digital analytics, there is a lot to track and as many ways to do it as there are sites out there. One question that often comes up is how to use different analytics parameters to get the best information. There are two key parameters to understand marketing effectiveness: traffic sources and campaign identifiers (IDs). For Webtrends, these are the WT.tsrc and WT.mc_id parameters, respectively. Traffic source should offer a quick-glance overview of general channels, perfect for comparing different sources for an executive-level review. Campaign IDs provide a more granular view of specific campaigns, critical for your marketing teams to determine a campaign s effectiveness in relation to other campaigns. Another parameter for search, WT.srch=1, plays a role in calculating traffic sources for the WT.tsrc parameter. Traffic Source (WT.trsc) Normally this parameter contains a value calculated by Webtrends according to a criteria to set traffic source values. There are a number of standard reports for the traffic category in Webtrends Analytics. Check out this link to read more about these specific reports. However, there is no way for Webtrends to automatically identify some traffic channels, such as , newsletters or certain types of ads in paid search. If these aren t tracked with a campaign parameter, this traffic may come to your site without any referring information and therefore, the traffic source parameter will be assigned Unknown. To avoid site traffic going into the Unknown traffic source bucket, include the traffic source parameter on any links that send traffic to your site. This includes blasts, newsletters, social site posts and marketing campaigns. It is possible to set the standard traffic source parameter values or override them to create a customized one by using the syntax WT.tsrc=OverrideTrafficSourceValue, for example WT.tsrc= . When the traffic source parameter is on an in-bound link the parameter value will override the workflow. So instead of Unknown, the traffic source will be . For Webtrends Explore, traffic sources are calculated in a similar way. There is an additional Other Campaigns category with new logic to support display ads coming from a search engine network to differentiate from other Paid Search. This update was made to support changes in online advertising/search trends, network updates and media tactics. Search (WT.srch=1) This is the parameter used to differentiate between paid search and organic search traffic. It must be passed to the landing page to which the search engine directs visitors for Webtrends to consider this paid search. It is important to note only WT.srch=1 has meaning. No other values are defined or recognized. 2

3 Traffic source is determined across each row top-to-bottom Traffic Source Referrer Field Search Engine* (keywords.ini) Social Media** (keywords.ini) WT.srch=1 Present WT.mc_id Present Paid Search Not Empty YES NO YES N/A Organic Search Not Empty YES NO NO N/A Social Campaigns Not Empty NO YES N/A YES Social Not Empty NO YES N/A NO Referring Sites Not Empty NO NO N/A NO Other Campaigns Not Empty NO NO N/A YES Other Campaigns Empty N/A N/A N/A YES Unknown Referrer Empty N/A N/A N/A NO * Search Engine is determined by matching the referrer field to an entry in the keywords.ini file. There must be a string match in the domain, and there must be an accompanying query parameter indicating the search phrase. ** Social Media is determined by matching the referrer field to an entry in the keywords.ini file in which Social=1 is present. This is a string match on the domain. Campaign ID (WT.mc_id) This is the standard Webtrends parameter for tracking your marketing campaigns you can define your own campaign ID. Where you place the WT.mc_id parameter depends on your site configuration, and the kind of campaign you are tracking. If you use landing pages, place the WT.mc_id parameter on each campaign s landing page, creating a redirect to the home page if necessary. If you don t have unique landing pages for each campaign you run, just place the parameter in the URL of a link on the referring page, or within an HTML-formatted . Campaigns can be tracked by adding WT.mc_id=YourCampaignName to the campaign s target URL. For example: The parameter must be set in the query string of the URL, which is the part of the URL after a question mark (?). The question mark instructs the browser to treat all subsequent text as a query string. This way you can have multiple campaigns leading visitors to one landing page, but the WT.mc_id parameter to differentiates where individual visits are coming from. 3

4 When to Use Traffic Source vs. Campaign ID Traffic Vs. Campaign Traffic Sources Consider these the big buckets for your executive-level insights Campaign Identifiers (IDs) Granular detail on specific campaigns to understand ROI These two parameters can be used together to provide greater insight into where traffic comes from, as well as to support campaign analysis. But, what is the best approach to use with each? Traffic source identification can provide the big buckets for an overview of traffic. The point is to be descriptive. Instead of just Paid Search or Social Campaigns as a category, you can customize the traffic source to indicate types that might have more meaning from a traffic standpoint, such as Retargeting, Display Ads, , etc. However, don t get carried away with too many types. It is best to keep it simple at the traffic source level. When you need more granular detail, especially on how specific campaigns are performing, that s where the use of campaign IDs come into play. If you re doing something like a social post and you have control over the content going out to other sites put a campaign ID on it. While you may decide to get really descriptive in your campaign IDs, translation tables can be helpful to provide easy to understand descriptions. A translation table acts as a simple lookup to translate the campaign ID into a more meaningful description. Campaign IDs can be structured to provide information about the campaign and content. Consider a simple format for campaign IDs identifiers for the campaign, including: content, creative, initiative or date. It is best to not mix campaign IDs with traffic sources. For example, if is a one of your traffic sources, don t use it as a part of your campaign ID. Sample of columns from Webtrends Marketing own translation file Campaign ID Content Creative Initiative SharePoint ImproveIt! - Webinar Sponsored Post SharePoint Path to Personalization - Whitepaper PDF Digital Marketing Form Fills Blog Organic Post Finance Steps to Measurement - Slideshare Text Digital Marketing

5 Ensure Alignment and Consistency Are all of your marketing managers consistently using traffic source and campaign ID parameters? Is everyone speaking the same language? With all of the moving pieces of today s marketing teams, including distributed teams and agencies, you need to establish standards for everyone to follow. This way your reporting is consistent and aligned across all your initiatives. To ensure the business can effectively use and trust campaign data, work with your team to: Select and use the right digital analytics parameters to meet your business needs Standardize campaign naming conventions Establish the KPIs which define campaign success or failure Bring these standards and definitions together into a document that your marketing teams can follow as new campaigns are launched and new employees or agencies come on board. Contact North America [email protected] Europe, Middle East, Africa +44 (0) [email protected] Australia, Asia +61 (0) [email protected] webtrends.com Share Results from Traffic Source and Campaign Analysis At the end of the day, we all need to be able to show the results of our efforts. By better understanding your traffic sources with custom tags, effectively using campaign IDs for more detailed tracking and analysis, and ensuring data consistency you ll not only be able to see who is coming from where, but understand the impact to your business. Join the Conversation Click here to share your tips in the Webtrends Community Forum. 5