Even with all these statistics, web marketers are demanding increasingly sophisticated analysis tools. The purpose of web mining, he says, is to analyze online investments in an effort to maximize return. The real value of web-traffic analysis software lies not in its data collection functions, but in its reporting functions. Reams of technical data are useless unless they can be massaged easily into a presentation-quality format, says McClure. These features make web-traffic information easy to obtain for everyone in the organization.
Most software packages allow for standard reports as well as custom reports.
Standard reports might include the results of quantitative analysis, showing counters, averages and trends of a wide variety of visitor, content and infrastructure activities, Page says. They also might include qualitative analysis that incorporate site-defined filters. Such reports can be used to evaluate the results of marketing campaigns, such as the effectiveness of advertising vs. public relations activities, the effectiveness of onsite banner ads and external banner ads. It also can offer insight into the effectiveness of the site's configuration by analyzing popular paths through the site and entry and exit points. Analysis from net.