Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 10.4
Top Entry Pages by Page URL report
By now, you might be asking why it is that Yahoo! only chose to illustrate two
level deep paths and not illustrate horizontally three levels, four levels, or all the way to
the end of the path. You can move further into the path, which you do by clicking the
arrow next to the last branch of the three. it will remove the first level and essentially
just shift everything one step left.
But before you get carried away doing this, know that there are an unlimited
number of paths a visitor can take and the longer that path is, the more likely it is to
be unique. the more unique paths you have, the fewer conclusions you can draw. imag-
ine 50,000 unique paths out of 62,300 visits. so the shorter the distance your Yahoo!
report looks ahead, the more likely you are to be able to group paths together and form
a conclusion. note, however, that some industry experts question full-path analysis as a
valid methodology for gaining insight.
now that you know the difference between site entries and all transit traffic
path analysis reporting, i want to show you another element of path analysis reporting
that i call forward-looking versus backward-looking path analysis reporting.
Don't worry; we are coming to the insights shortly. What you have seen so far is
the forward-looking path analysis, which has a fixed starting point and can branch out
in an unlimited number of ways. the backward-looking path analysis views paths with
a fixed ending point and explores how certain path visitors used the most to get to this
point.
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this also turns around the criteria on which you want your path analysis to be
displayed:
s
•
how site exits only (visit paths for the visits that ended on this page)
s
•
how all transit traffic (visit paths for the visits that included this page)
site entry is exchanged for site exit. Unlike with site entry path analyses, with
site exit analyses it is a good idea to look at all transit traffic. We probably don't care
too much if people exit after this point (a confirmation page, for example)—we just
want to figure out how they got here.
