Mapping Visitors Behavior to Business Goals through Click Stream Analysis

1
Mapping Visitors Behavior to Business Goals
through Click Stream Analysis

• Prof. Vishnuprasad Nagadevara
• Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
• nagadev_at_iimb.ernet.in

2
Definition

• Web Analytics as defined by Web Analytics
  Association
• Web Analytics is the measurement, collection,
  analysis and reporting of Internet data for the
  purposes of understanding and optimizing Web
  usage.
• Clickstream as defined by Internet Advertising
  Bureau (IAB)
• The electronic path a user takes while
  navigating from site to site, and from page to
  page within a site. It is a comprehensive body of
  data describing the sequence of activity between
  a users browser and any other Internet resource,
  such as a Web site or third party ad server
• http//www.webanalyticsassociation.org/aboutus/

3
Information from Web Analytics

• How many visitors visit the page daily?
• Who are the regular visitors?
• What percentage of the visitors to the page are
  registered users?
• What are the top pages that are visited on the
  web page?
• What is the average visit time on the website?
• How often does the visitor return to the site?
• What is the average page depth of a visitor?
• What is the geographic distribution of users of
  the website?

4
Measures

• Clicks The interaction between the user and the
  web server is measured by the click of a mouse.
• Visits The number of times a user visits a
  specific web site. Every new session is counted
  as a new visit.
• Hits Total number of server requests serviced by
  the server
• Exits Site exits, counted by site inactivity for
  more than 30 minutes
• Unique Visitors A Unique User who accesses the
  site in a specified period of time.
• Repeated Visitor The average number of times a
  user returns to a site over a specific time
  period.
• Page views The view of any page by the user. A
  page may contain text, images, and other online
  elements and may be statically or dynamically
  generated and could contain single or multiple
  frames or screens.
• Sessions IAB defines it to be an A sequence of
  Internet activity made by one user at one site.
  If a user makes no request from a site during a
  30 minute period of time, the next content or ad
  request would then constitute the beginning of a
  new visit
• Unique authenticated visitors A unique visitor
  who logs on to a site via a registration method
  using his/her user id and password.

5
Metrics

• Page views per visit Average number of page
  views per visit.
• Page views per session Average number of page
  views per session.
• Page views per hour/day Average number of page
  views per hour/day.
• Clicks per session Average number or clicks per
  session.
• Clicks per hour Average number of clicks per
  hour.
• Time between clicks The average duration of time
  spent between two clicks.
• Hits per hour Average number of hits to the web
  server per hour.
• Busy hour of the day The highest number of hits
  to the web server in a particular hour of a day.

6
Implementing Web Analytics

• Define your business objectives
• Define the KPIs that are important for your
  business based on objectives and goals of
  business.
• Identify the data that needs to be collected.
• Identify the process to collect the data
• Prepare the data, analyze and interpret the data
• Design and implement the plan of action
• Monitor the data for continuous feedback

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Objectives of the Study

• The objectives of this study are to
• Explore Web analytics and its usefulness to web
  based business.
• Identify the techniques used in click stream
  analysis.
• Identify the application of click stream analysis
  through analyzing click stream data obtained from
  a particular website using appropriate click
  stream analysis techniques.

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Methodology

• This study analyzes the click stream data
  obtained from a web site, which specializes in an
  online information exchange service to facilitate
  identification of suitable partners, in India and
  other countries.
• The site has a very different revenue model. The
  visitors are allowed to browse through the site
  without any initial payment. The visitors are
  allowed to look at the profiles of prospective
  partners free of charge. The visitors will have
  to become members by making a one-time payment
  only when they need to contact the prospective
  brides or grooms.
• Users can search for profiles through advanced
  search options on the site on various preferences
  ranging from basic details of preferred partner
  to lifestyle, career, education, profession etc.

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Methodology

• Members can make initial contact with each other
  through services available via Chat, SMS, and
  e-mail.
• Users can avail free registration on the website
  and are assured of exclusive privacy and
  confidentiality. The website allows the users to
  create their profiles, search for other profiles,
  and express interest in other profiles and
  contact others. Registration and creating a
  profile is free of cost.
• Registered users can become paid members that
  will allow them to contact others, view contact
  details of other members, write personalized
  messages, initiate chats and let other members
  view their contact details. Paid memberships are
  provided for a specified duration.

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Methodology

• The click stream data is analyzed to identify
  different paths taken by the visitors and the
  sequence of pages that lead to payment of
  membership fee. Based on this analysis, specific
  strategies are recommended to maximize the
  revenue for the website.

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DATA PREPARATION

• Problem Format of data
• Clickstream data files are neither delimited nor
  fixed length files
• Solution
• Used the date in the clickstream as the delimiter
  to import data to database
• Have to perform string handling in database to
  separate out the fields

10.208.65.96 172.16.8.37, 124.124.35.130 - -
23/May/2008000000 -0400 "GET
/billing/billing.php?usercid22401528da14a61c435
12fa025b59578i353273 HTTP/1.0" 200
1832 10.208.65.96 68.126.193.219 - -
23/May/2008000000 -0400 "GET
/profile/js/common.js HTTP/1.1" 200
1246210.208.65.96 59.95.71.32 - -
23/May/2008000000 -0400 "GET
/P/css/comm_style.css HTTP/1.1" 200
2640 10.208.65.96 122.163.70.145 - -
23/May/2008000000 -0400 "GET
/P/search.php?checksumsearchchecksum16465054j
300newsearchinf_checksumcastemappingcrmback
searchorderTlabel_select_nosavesearchfrom_
indexviewallsave_search_redirecthide_search_
bary HTTP/1.1" 200 21561 10.208.65.96
61.1.81.153 - - 23/May/2008000000 -0400 "GET
/P/css/homestyle.css HTTP/1.1" 304
26 10.208.65.96 68.197.236.117 - -
23/May/2008000000 -0400 "GET
/profile/mainmenu.php?checksum3590208069017f9d759
33dfa9ac9005di537f26ca181f05c308393257397ab261i2
810388 HTTP/1.1" 200 3333 10.208.65.96
172.16.25.60, 59.145.189.43 - -
23/May/2008000000 -0400 "GET
/P/css/homestyle.css HTTP/1.0" 304
26 10.208.65.96 10.232.65.96, 10.232.49.1,
203.126.136.220 - - 23/May/2008000000 -0400
"GET /profile/mainmenu.php?checksum HTTP/1.1"
200 3329
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Data

• Data is obtained from the site in the form of
  click stream records. Each record consists of
  the details of clicks by the visitors and each
  record contains the following details
• Server IP
• Client IP
• Time stamp with Date
• Status HTTP Status code
• URL requested has three subfields namely The
  request method, resource requested and the
  protocol used
• No. of bytes transferred
• The country of origin for a specific request is
  identified using the IP address.

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Data

• URL is used to identify the information/web page
  browsed by the visitors.
• Time stamp of each click is used to sequence the
  movement of the visitors across different pages
  in the website.
• Identifying a unique user session is an important
  step in the analysis of click stream data.
  Inactivity for more than 30 minutes is considered
  as a break of session.
• This is an approximation since there could be
  multiple users accessing from the same IP, or the
  same user accessing from different IPs.
• Due to lack of more data available we consider
  hits from each unique IP as belonging to a unique
  user for a unique session.

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No of Sessions
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Countries By Hour
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Exit Points
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Different Pages Accessed
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Web Diagram Freq 19,000
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Web Diagram Freq 1,000
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Associations
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Summary and Conclusions

• Usage of the website by time of the day.
• This will help busy hour identification, and
  provide information of the server capacity
  required for the website, and when maintenance
  window can be scheduled.
• Usage of website from different geographic
  location.
• This can provide the data of the distribution of
  users across geographical locations
• Exit screens
• provide information on where the users exit from
  the website. This input can help redesign the
  webpage if it provides information on which pages
  are breaking the flow of the user session.

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Summary and Conclusions

• Most accessed and least accessed pages
• This can be used for variable pricing of
  advertisings on the web page. This can also be
  used for better user interface design and space
  utilization, by removing or repositioning the
  links that are infrequently accessed.
• Associations
• Provide information on unique actions on the
  website and the sequence in which the user has
  performed these actions. This can be used in
  better user interface design.
• Web diagrams
• Gives information on co-occurrence of actions on
  the webpage and their significance also
  provides inputs on user interface design.

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• Questions?
• Suggestions?
• Comments?