Gary Angel's post on visitor segmentation based on the percentage of content a visitor viewed on a website is very helpful. None of the tools I work with do this but I'll try to work though an example, as one one of my last posts of 2006 using Google Analytics.
The problem is immediately apparent - While Google Analytics can segment from a geographic location to content - it can't tell you how many of those visitors viewed an area of my blog that also view site other areas of the blog.
Segment: People who visited a particular post about Noka Chocolates
City | Visits | P/Visit | G1/Visit | $/Visits |
1. | (no data) | 11 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
2. | Dallas | 7 | 1.86 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
3. | Oakland | 6 | 2.17 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
4. | Poynings | 5 | 1.60 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
5. | Los Angeles | 5 | 1.20 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
6. | Dublin | 4 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
7. | Houston | 4 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
8. | Fort Worth | 3 | 1.67 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
9. | Swords | 3 | 1.33 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
10. | Plano | 3 | 1.33 | 0.00% | $0.00 |
Totals: | 145 | 1.25 | 0 | 0 |
You can see that Google Analytics can't tell me if the same people who came from Dallas to view this post (7 visits) also visted other content.
Using a different filter - Geolocation - Dallas viewing Content
Content | Visits | P/Visit | G1/Visit | $/Visits |
1. | (no data) | 59 | 1.24 | 1.69% | $0.00 | ||||||
2. | /seths_blog/2006/09/political_new_m.html | 41 | 1.05 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
3. | /cgi-bin/afterWorkOptions.cgi | 4 | 1.75 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
4. | /en/art/ | 2 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
5. | /2006/11/21/review-of-the-optimus-dv-5040-50mp-digital-camera-camcorder/ | 1 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
6. | /search | 1 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
7. | /seths_blog/2006/12/adventures_in_p.html | 1 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
8. | / | 1 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
9. | /blogtipping/ | 1 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 | ||||||
10. | /dan-noka-chocolates-valiant-defender.html | 1 | 1.00 | 0.00% | $0.00 |
Totals: | 112 | 1.17 | 0.89% | 0 |
It's possible that one person (visit) viewing my Noda Chocolates post also viewed other content like my post on the Optimus DV 5040 Digital Camera here either (did the one visitor who saw the Noka post also look at the Search box, or did they look a post on Seth Godin - can't tell.
I tried one more thing - take a post and track the navigation to and from it - again - it's not going to solve the issue Gary Angel brought up:
It looks to me as if a higher end, more powerful package than Google Analytics is needed to do what Gary suggests we really need:
"......ability to classify visitors based on their percentage usage of an area is extremely rich. Not only does it provide the best way to classify visitors by interest, it also lets you identify special kinds of customers. In a transaction site, for example, it’s much more interesting to know the ratio of customer support pages to transactions than it is the raw number of customer support pages. The same is true when you are tying to build "interest-baskets" on a publishing site. If you just look at how many visitors who looked a X also looked at Y, you’re likely to get lots of navigational "noise." You’ll no doubt discover, for example, that your content is highly related to the home page. But if you can analyze related content by percentage of mind-share, you are getting a much richer view of how visitors actually behave."
In other words, my readout (above) would need to look something like this
2. | <><> | 3 |
2006/12/list_of_social_networking_webs.html |
And that's just scratching the surface. But that's what Gary Angel is talking about - what is the visitor segment consuming the most (what are they interested in the most?)
I don't think Google Analytics, as it's presently set up, can answer those questions - that's fine - there's higher end packages that should be able to do it.
Look forward to meeting Gary when he visits NY soon. Great Stuff - real nuts and bolts of why high end packages are needed. Thanks for the post Gary.
