Urchin 5.5 – Web Analytics Product Review - Visitors and Sessions Reporting
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We will now move on to the "Visitors and Sessions" reporting section. The first report shown is the "Visitors by Day" graph. This graph has all the features of the other graphs but provides an additional level of detail. As you can see, there are orange and green colors on the bar graphs. The orange represents the first time unique visitors and the green represents the prior unique visitors. You can click on the green part of a bar and it will tell you the exact number of prior unique visitors that visited that day. Urchin tracks this information with a first party cookie.
Urchin gives you the ability to view this information both by "Visitor", as shown in this screen shot as well as by "Session". The next screen shot you will see is termed "Unique Sessions." Keep in mind that there is also a "Unique Visitors" graph that does the same thing but with different data points. The unique sessions graph can be charted as a bar graph or pie chart. I have selected the pie chart for this report. This report gives you the percentage of initial sessions, versus repeat sessions over that data range period. You can actually click on the piece of the chart to make it stand out, like an exploding affect. You will see examples of this later on.
Another interesting report in the visitors and sessions section of Urchin is the "Visitor Loyalty" graph. This report helps you understand the loyalty factor of your Web visitors. The more loyal your visitors (the more sessions per unique cookie) the higher the bar graphs will be on the right side. There is a similar report named "Session Frequency" which provides this information in a different light. All reports have their own individual purpose.
This final screen shot displays the visitors and sessions summary overview. It provides the user with the ability to see summarized numbers of the above graphs in an organized and efficient layout. I cannot stress how important it is to display this information in an intuitive manner. Urchin has done an excellent job in this respect! The format comprises consistent navigation on the left, date range information at the top and bottom left. The data you want is right in the middle, and the help is customized per report under the graph and/or data.
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