Chapter 9: E-commerce Software

Google Analytics 

• Reflect on which statistics you feel are most important and why.
• What statistic would you like to see that may not be there already?
• How can this information be used to assist in developing an organization's e-commerce strategies?

After a week of using Google Analytics on my blog, there were (3) main categories that I feel collected the most important data. These categories were "Visitors," "Traffic Sources," and "Content." Within the "Visitors" category,  I think the overall visits, absolute unique visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, and browser capabilities helped to see the success rate in attracting viewers to the website as well as recognized the types of viewers visiting. With my blog, I received 34 overall visits within a week, but of those 34, only 29 were absolute unique visitors. This means that 5 visits actually came from the same viewer. These 29 visitors, visited an average of 1.21 pages per visit and gave an 85.29% bounce rate, which showed me that these viewers showed little interest in my blogs. As far as the usefulness of the browser capabilities, I think by knowing which browsers your viewers are using, you can better create your website to compliment those browsers and hopefully gain more traffic. Reviewing the "Traffic Sources" section would also help because of it's breakdown of sources and keywords, which attracted visitors to my site. The majority of my visitors came from a direct link, which showed me that very few visitors did not take any effort in searching for my website. However, for those who did, the google search tool directed them the most and by using the keywords that they used to find my site within my blogs, I can hopefully attract more visitors. However, it is the "Content" section which helps the most in attracting more visitors. By seeing the breakdown of which pages the visitors visited the most, I can see what interest them and what did not. Many of my visitors showed more interest in chapters 5 and 8 as opposed to the rest of the chapters. This can help me better improve the pages they did not visit as well as expand on the visits they showed more interest on. By using these three statistic categories, I can help focus on certain visitors, customize my website to the majority of my visitors, take advantage of keywords through search results, and edit content in terms of viewer interest.

If I were to ask for any other statistic, which I think would be beneficial to e-commerce, I would suggest maybe having an "Origin" section. This section can be broken down by countries, states, and even languages. This would help in international e-commerce. I would also suggest a "Transaction" section. Many e-commerce sites include web catalogs and process payments. Perhaps having the capability to track transactions would help companies better track their profits, rate their products based on profits, expand their payment options, as well as better their payment software. Last, I would maybe want a "Time" section, which would track the exact times of visits. Companies can take advantage of this by highlighting short-term sales during peak times. They can also better their customer service and sales representative availabilities, which will not only take advantage of more sales, but show the quality of their service. Overall, all of these suggested statistics can help to increase the quality of an e-commerce business, but it is really up to the company or individual in how they take advantage of these statistics.