1. David M. Williams
15/10/13
Swansea Itec – ITQ Diploma for IT Users Level 2
APPLICATION OF NUMBER
PROJECT
Index
1.
Introduction & Hypothesis
2.
UK Visitors
3.
Website Visitors in 2012
4.
Custom Reporting
5.
Referrals
6.
Search Query Position
7.
Final Comments
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2. David M. Williams
15/10/13
1. Introduction & Hypothesis
The purpose of this project is to analyse, review and report on the new
website’s performance (www.advancedheatingwales.com).
The data will be collected from three different sources - Google
Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Pickaweb Cpanel AW Stats. All
three sources will provide various facts and statistics relating to our
website’s performance and its visitor’s behavior.
I hope to use the data collected to help improve the website and
company’s performance. One way I plan to do so, is by comparing the
visits to the three following pages: Servicing and Landlord Certs,
Maintenance Work and Contact Us. I hope that the amount of visits to
the ‘contact us’ page is similar to visits to the other two pages,
suggesting that visitors are not put off by our callout rates.
I will be comparing the key phrases used. At the moment, most of the
searches seem to relate directly to the company name and I hope to see
an increase in successful searches using more generic phrases relating to
our industry, such as ‘boiler service swansea’ or ‘cheap boiler change
cardiff’.
I will also analyse the location of our visitors. I would expect the majority
to come from Swansea with other South Wales regions following closely
behind.
I also plan to review our referrals. Our company became members of the
Ospreys RFC Executive Club last month, which entitled us to have a link
to our website from their site. At present, we have had 10 referrals in
total. I hope to see a steady increase in the future. We are also currently
waiting for a link to be added from the Penlan RFC website. Once the link
is present, I will compare the amount of referrals received from both
sites. Although the Ospreys site has far more visitors, I feel we may get
more referrals from the Penlan RFC site, as our company directors have
been members of the club for many years. I expect this to be a large
factor as all the current members (who will be using the Penlan RFC site)
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3. David M. Williams
15/10/13
are aware of the long standing affiliation between the club and our
company.
Finally I will compare search query ranking with Google, using
Webmaster tools. I will compare Webmaster tools average position with
the actual search position when searching while logged into Google and
while searching ‘in cognito’ mode. The ‘in cognito’ masks any ties or
memories the search engine may have with the browser or PC that you
are using. This will allow me to accurately see where our website ranks
with search terms when searched by potential customers on their PCs /
browsers. When searching while logged into Google, I may be getting
inaccurate records when manually checking ranking on Google as the
search engine may be linking our website with my search and ranking
the site higher than normal.
2. UK Visitors
The following data was collected from Google Analytics on 18th October
2012. It details all the UK visits to the website between 17th September
and 17th October 2012.
Region
Visits
Pages / Visit
Avg. Visit Duration
England
75
2.99
00:01:58
Wales
55
3.42
00:03:24
Scotland
2
1
00:00:00
132
3.14
00:02:32
Initially I was surprised to see that the website had had more visitors
from England than Wales. Our website is mainly aimed at customers in
the South Wales Region, and although we still expect some visitors from
England, ideally the volume of visitors from Wales should be greater. It is
no surprise that the level of visitors from Scotland is so low, as they are
outside our target area.
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4. David M. Williams
15/10/13
There are two main reasons that I believe best explain the cause of the
higher traffic levels:
1. We have recently completed a Tesco Store project in Leicester, a
Sainsbury Store project in Boscombe and have recently started a
Sainsbury project in Swindon – all of which are in England, which
may have raised our profile through word of mouth, site presence
and signed vans being noticed.
2. There are several companies in England with similar business
names to ours such as ‘Advance Heating’, ‘Advance Heating –
Milton Keynes’ and Advanced Heating Technologies. Customers
may have been looking for these companies and accidentally
landed on our site.
Visits
80
70
60
50
40
Visits
30
20
10
0
England
Wales
Scotland
Pages / Visit
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
Pages / Visit
1.5
1
0.5
(I chose a bar charts for this data as it clearly compares one quantity to another)
4
0
England
Wales
Scotland

5. David M. Williams
15/10/13
Although there have been more visitors from England in the selected
period, the above chart suggests that the visitors from Wales have been
more interested in our services, as they have viewed more pages per
visit on average.
The chart below also suggest more interest from the Wales-based
visitors, as they have been spending more time on average browsing our
pages.
(I chose a bar chart for this data as it clearly compares one quantity to another)
After analysing the statistics, I conclude that although we may very well
be experiencing some increased traffic from England due to our work
presence in the country, our site is also having several visits in error from
customers searching for similarly named companies. My conclusion is
backed up by the fact that the England-based visitors are spending less
time on the site and browsing less pages than their Welsh counterparts.
This is because once they open our website and see ‘Advanced Heating
Wales’, they are probably realising that they have found the wrong
company!
Despite my initial conclusions, my findings could also indicate that we do
receive a lot of genuine interest from England. The visits to our site may
be shorter as the website currently displays South Wales as our main
covered region, which will put off customers from England. I will be
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6. David M. Williams
15/10/13
closely monitoring the England-based traffic in future and if it continues
to exceed the traffic from Wales, our company may have to review our
coverage area, and possibly consider employing engineers nearer to or
in England in order to target the work opportunities there.
3. Website Visitors in 2012
The data table below was taken from the AW Stats in the Pickaweb
Cpanel.
Since July 2012 the Website has experienced an increase in visitors,
showing steady growth. This so happens to coincide with the publishing
of the new website. The first draft was published on 16th June 2012.
Since then, each month has shown increased traffic as I have been
developing the website as my main project.
October shows a decrease in visitors as we are only partly through the
month (18th) and by the end; I expect to see a further increase on
September’s visitors.
Month
Unique visitors
Number of
visits
Jan-2012
109
162
Feb-2012
97
121
Mar-2012
95
123
Apr-2012
97
115
May-2012
89
104
Jun-2012
77
104
Jul-2012
137
228
Aug-2012
164
306
Sep-2012
154
343
Oct-2012
253
473
Nov-2012
306
581
Total
1,578
2,660
(I chose to present this information in a table as the months and results are clearly detailed for thorough review)
I would expect increased traffic to the website during the colder months,
as customers’ heating and plumbing needs increase. January and
February of this year were particularly, but our website attracted more
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7. David M. Williams
15/10/13
visitors in August. The only logical explanation for this is that the website
was hugely improved during my project.
As a result, I expect to see continued increase in visitors as we enter the
winter period, peaking between December and February.
Website Visitors in 2012
700
600
Visitors
500
400
Unique visitors
300
200
Number of visits
100
0
(I chose a line chart to present this data as it clearly shows the increase in visitors to the website over time)
Jan2012
Feb2012
Mar2012
Apr2012
May2012
Jun2012
Jul2012
Aug2012
Sep2012
Oct2012
Nov2012
The above graph clearly shows that both the number of new and
returning visitors has increased since the publishing of the new site.
Despite both sets of visitors increasing, the fact that we have had a
bigger increase in returning visitors suggest to me that the appearance
of our website has been significantly improved as more and more
visitors are returning to the site for a second look.
These statistics all support the fact that our website has been improved
and demonstrate that to date my project has been a success!
I aim to continue analysing the monthly traffic, and hope to maintain
steady growth. If we begin to experience less traffic, I aim to use the
skills I have learned at Swansea Itec to find out why and make any
necessary improvements.
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8. David M. Williams
15/10/13
4. Custom Reporting
I set up a custom report on Google Analytics to compare the amount of
customers visiting the two pages on our site that display rates in
comparison to the amount visiting our ‘contact us’ page.
I had hoped that the visits to the ‘contact us’ page would be near to the
amount of visits to the two other pages combined. This report will
hopefully provide reassurance that our call out rates are not too
expensive and do not put potential customers off contacting us.
The table and pie chart below show that we actually had more visitors to
our contact us page than to the rates pages in the selected period
(18/10/2012 – 29/11/2012).
Maintenance
Rates
Gas Cert Rates
Total Visits to
Rates Pages
Contact Us Page
32
33
65
69
Page Visit Comparison
Maintenance Rates
24%
Contact Form
51%
Gas Cert Rates
25%
(I chose a pie chart to present this data because it gives an instant idea of the proportions of visitors to each page)
Although some of the visitors to the ‘contact us’ page may have been
looking for our contact details in the first place and not even viewed our
rates, it is still the positive result I had hoped for.
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9. David M. Williams
15/10/13
My findings have reassured me that our company rates are competitive
as a lot of our websites visitors are showing genuine interest in
contacting us and are not simply looking at our rates and leaving the
site.
If the number of visitors to the ‘contact us’ page was to drop below the
number of visitors to the rates pages in the future, I would consider
carrying out some market research on our competitors to review their
rates and make sure ours are still competitive in the current market.
5. Referrals
(I chose a bar chart for this data as it clearly compares one quantity to another – these 3D cylinders also helped improve the
appearance of this document)
The above bar chart shows the number of referrals in the month of
November.
As mentioned in my introduction, we currently sponsor Penlan RFC and
have an Executive membership with Ospreys RFC. Both of which entitle
us to a website link from their site.
We have quite a low number of referrals in the selected period so there
wasn’t much information to analyse. One thing this has brought to my
attention is that from a marketing perspective the large sum of money
paid to become an Ospreys Executive member, isn’t going to be
recouped from increase in sales resulting from web exposure. Although
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10. David M. Williams
15/10/13
our employees and customers do enjoy attending the game and
executive suite as our guests!
That said, we had twice as many referrals from the Ospreys site as from
the Penlan RFC site, which indicates that the Ospreys site is a better
marketing place for our company. We would however have to measure
the costs to see whether we would be better off sponsoring several local
sports clubs as opposed to one larger organisation like the Ospreys.
I was not expecting to see ‘advancedheatingwales.com’ as one of the
referrals. I can only assume this is from internal links on our website,
which is of no benefit to us as the potential customer must have already
been viewing our website.
6. Search Query Position
Below is a table of data showing our expected search query position
from Webmaster Tools in comparison to the actual position searching
while logged into Google and compared to searching ‘in cognito’ mode.
Table info from Webmaster Tools dated 01/11/2012 - 16/01/2013
Query
Impressions
Clicks
CTR
Avg.
position
Actual
position
logged
into
Google
16/01/13
Actual
position
in cognito
mode
16/01/13
cheap boilers
320
<10
-
31
24
24
advanced heating
200
<10
-
4.9
2
2
advanced heating wales
70
60
86%
1.0
1
1
advanced plumbing
35
<10
-
10
8
8
advanced heating and plumbing
16
<10
-
6.8
4
4
plumbers swansea
12
<10
-
48
21
21
plumbers cardiff
12
<10
-
210
>400
>400
advanced heating swansea
<10
<10
-
2.0
1
1
gas safe login
<10
<10
-
45
>200
>200
plumber swansea
<10
<10
-
28
>200
>200
cardiac itu
<10
<10
-
7.2
>200
>200
gas safety certificate cardiff
<10
<10
-
19
18
18
insurance call center
<10
<10
-
22
>200
>200
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11. David M. Williams
15/10/13
bellway homes swansea
<10
<10
-
47
25
25
advance heating
<10
<10
-
19
4
4
commercial heating swansea
<10
<10
-
7.5
5
5
advanced plumbing and heating
<10
<10
-
11
34
34
cheap boiler
<10
<10
-
35
41
41
<10
<10
-
13
12
12
gas safe swansea
(I chose to present this information in a table as the months and results are clearly detailed for thorough review)
I have highlighted the columns of interest in green.
The search terms were taken from the first page of terms provided on
the Webmaster tools report. Some of which are of no use to our
company as they have no relation to our business.
For instance Webmaster Tools has our website ranked 7.2 for the term
‘cardiac ITU’. This is because towards the end of 2012 I posted a blog
regarding some sponsorship money raised by our managing director for
the Cardiac ITU at Morriston Hospital after doing the Cardiff half
marathon. After posting the blog, Google obviously gave the blog page a
high ranking due to it’s contents and wording.
The reason I chose to analyse this data is because until I had a
conversation with my tutor (Stella), I was not aware that my search
terms may rank higher when searching on my PC or when logged into
Google than if someone independent was carrying out the same search.
This means that when manually checking search terms in the past, I may
have thought that our website had a better ranking for certain key
searches that than it actually has.
To my surprise, all the terms had the same ranking whether searching
‘in cognito’ or while logged into Google. I am unsure why this is, but it
does reassure me that when I have previously manually checked our
ranking for other key terms, I have had an accurate reading.
There are some big differences in Webmaster Tools average rankings in
comparison to the actual rankings. I believe this is because the
Webmaster Tools is an average taken over a longer period, where as the
actual rankings were taken from searches made in a single day.
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12. David M. Williams
15/10/13
7. Final Comments
All the points that I have discussed and analysed prove that a website
will never remain succesful if simply left with no updates, alterations or
development as many of the rankings will drop. The data also suggests
that certain changes actually lower rankings. All this has increased my
understanding that I must continue to maintain and closely monitor our
website and it’s performance in order to improve it’s effectiveness. This
also reassures me that the company made the correct decision in
allowing me to attend this course in order for us to create and maintain
the webiste ‘in-house’ as opposed to continually employing an external
company to do so, which would cost a small fortune!
I hope I have been able to clearly demonstrate the skills and knowledge I
have gained while studying at Swansea Itec, considering I didn’t know
anything about website building and development before I started. To
date the course has provided me with great opportunity to learn new
skills and build my confidence in ICT. I now look forward to the prospect
of continuing to do a level 3 qualification this year and further develop
my skills.
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