For those unfamiliar with bit.ly, it is a URL shortener. You simply enter a long and complicated URL and it generates a shorter version (approx. 20 characters). The use of bit.ly and other URL shorteners is exploding because of Social Media. The need to conserve characters for Twitter's 140 character and the desire to hide all the tracking paramenters have contributed to its grow.
While each URL shorter provides it's own basic analytic data (how many people clicked on the shorten URL, where in the world the click happened, etc.) you had to check multiple sources and then how did you correlate this to your site's web analytic data?
Webtrends to the rescue. Webtrends now automatically tracks and reports on all bit.ly links that drive traffic to your site. There is nothing to do for any new profiles. For existing profiles you need to enable an additional report (Pages Dashboard). To retrieve the page's detailed data you simply click on the page's name (Title) in the pages report.
With the page's detailed data report open, you can see how many people clicked on a bit.ly shorten link to come to the page during the reporting period (in this example 85). Additionally Webtrends 10 reports on other important social media including "how many Likes" on facebook (16 in this example) and how many shares (8) the page generated.
A quick summary is also provided of referring traffic sources for the specified page.And a summary of next pages is also included which if configured correctly will show clicks to external sites.
All in all this detailed page report, brings together all the data you to evaluate an individual page's success or failure.
What would be nice as a future enhancement by Webtrends is the inclusion of other URL shortners, primarily ow.ly and goo.gl into this report as well.
The tracking of bit.ly and other social media activity make this Webtrends update worth it all by themselves.
1 comment:
Wow - that's look very nice indeed.
Thanks for sharing your experience with WebTrends 10.
As a former WebTrends (software) user, I enjoyed working with version 9. But with 10 there are really setting the bar in some areas - especially regarding the user interface and integration with some popular social media tools.
I just wonder how it will prove to be "useful" and what will be the real added-value once the "WOW-it-is-gorgeous" effect is gone.
Adding more data - in whatever way - doesn't necessarily make it more actionable. Past experience shows to more data doesn't mean more actions (usually the opposite ;))
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