Malta Independent MITA Feature 10th March 2011

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The Malta Independent | Thursday 10 March 2011

ICT Feature Trevor Grech

What is the deal with web reporting? Since its origin as a military infrastructure, the internet was already a useful basis for statistical tools. As the net evolved into the more personal, educational and commercial entity we are nowadays used to, these basics have been exploited and upgraded to provide fully fledged reporting and statistical engines. The Web Analytics Association’s definition of web analytics is “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimising web usage.” You may remember the counters which many older websites proudly displayed. On most modern websites, usage and traffic statistics are hidden from the view, though the engines still collect and store the same information. The information can then be used in a variety of ways. Over the years different schools of thought have evolved on how to gather and store website statistics, leading to two main implementations: web server log file analysis and web page tagging. Both have distinct benefits and a number of hybrid methods are also available.

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These vulnerabilities make web server log analysis an inadequate tool to gauge users’ activity on a website, but the stronger choice for matters of Search Engine Optimisation, as it records all server requests, including search engine spiders.

Trevor Grech is part of the eGovernment Department at MITA

Roderick Spiteri Roderick Spiteri is Marketing and Communications Executive at MITA and editor of Malta Independent ICT feature

Web server log analysis Every web server keeps log files with records of all its transactions. These files can be represented in statistical ways using web log analysis software, which allows us to highlight trends and projections and create reports and export results. The major benefit of using such a system is that all required tools are available on the web server and can be applied to all the websites being hosted on the machine without any need to change the sites and their content and with no dependencies on the client browsers. The disadvantage of this solution is that it cannot cater for caching. When you visit a website your internet browser stores some data on your computer so as to save on loading time. However, when you revisit the same page, the cached content will be reloaded without any request being sent to the web server. The clientserver environment works in this way so that the user will have a better Internet experience, but unfortunately this means that the web server cannot log user activity on these cached pages, so we can not tell how many repeat visits a website is getting. This is an important statistic to have, as it is a good indicator of strong user engagement. The caching problem may be partly resolved by disabling caching through web page coding or web server configuration but in turn, this may result in a degraded website experience and an increase in network traffic since more requests are sent to the web server. These vulnerabilities make web server log analysis an inadequate tool to gauge users’ activity on a website, but the stronger choice for matters of Search Engine Optimisation, as it records all server requests, including search engine spiders. Web page tagging Web page tagging works by including JavaScript code within the web pages. This code is engineered to send information to a third party server every time the web page is loaded by someone. A tiny piece of code called a ‘cookie’ is then left on your browser so as to uniquely identify you, for example as a repeat visitor, when you visit the page again. A web analytics service will collect and process this information and generate a variety of statistics and reports, which are available through a web portal. The caching issue mentioned above in web server log analysis does affect cookies at all. However, web page tagging is hindered by the fact that not everyone chooses to allow cookies on their computer, and not every browser version has JavaScript automatically enabled. Web analytics is ideal for organisations and individuals who do not host websites on their own web servers and are concerned with human activity on their websites. Many web analytics services are available for a monthly fee based on volume, although Google Analytics offers the entire suite of services free of charge. eGovernment Web Reporting and Statistics The Government of Malta uses Urchin

The Malta Independent ICT Feature The collection, organisation and interpretation of information for statistical purposes is used for every aspect of life. Statistics are also collected online and the development here has been spectacular. Whereas older websites proudly displayed a counter showing the amount of visitors, nowadays such information is hidden even though it’s much richer in detail. One of the arti-

cles in today’s ICT Feature is about the different schools of thought about web reporting and statistics. The National Sleep Foundation in America has just released the results of a poll showing that many people are not getting a goodnight sleep, and part of the blame is placed on the penetration and usage of electronic devices. We also wish to invite you for one of

the lectures by HP at the University of Malta and MCAST. These lectures will discuss various topics, including HP technologies and products, their research labs, cloud computing and digital publishing. While everyone is invited to attend, the lectures are of particular interest to tertiary and vocational students, lecturers, teachers and researchers.

Can’t sleep? Blame your computer or mobile phone

Traffic Monitor (UTM) within its eGovernment services in order to provide accurate metrics on every service utilisation. This technology is a hybrid consisting of two components, the UTM Sensor, a lightweight JavaScript tagging module which is inserted within all the main content pages of an eGovernment service website, and the Urchin Engine which is the web server log processing application. In this way, Urchin provides an accurate and complete picture of website activity, identifying all unique visitors and all the underlying web server transactions. To extract the data collected on a new eGovernment Web application using the UTM Sensor and the Urchin Engine, a website reporting profile needs to be created by MITA on the Urchin web reporting portal. The administrators may then extract the available data for their website within the desired date ranges and generate statistics and reports. These reports are varied and each of them provides unique insight into how users are using any page on the site. The following provides some informa-

tion on a number of reports which can be created. The Content Summary shows the number of times visitors exited from the entrance page without visiting any other page on the website – this is known as a ‘bounce’. A high bounce rate coupled with a low average time spent on the site means that the website is not engaging users, who perhaps can not find the information they are looking for immediately, give up and leave the site almost immediately. The Entrance Bounce Rates report lists the top entrance pages on which visitors land and their respective number of bounces and bounce rates. Using this report we may find out which of our pages are the weakest, and optimise them accordingly. The Browser Versions report provides an idea of the popularity of each browser version and suggests for which browsers the website should be optimised. For example, it is counterproductive to code a website in the new HTML 5 standard if the majority of your visitors are using a dated browser such as Internet Explorer 6. The Connection Speed report pro-

vides details on the internet connection speeds of the user base. The website should be optimised according to these connection speeds. The Overall Keyword Conversion report shows which keywords drive the highest quality traffic to the website. These words can be considered as your ‘organic keywords’, and are the keywords which search engines associates with your site. The higher the number of visits, the more users the search engine is sending to your site for that particular keyword. The Geo Map Overlay report is a graphical representation of the volume of visitors coming from different locations around the world. Using it we may see how our traffic is split amongst the different countries. Using this data, we may decide to translate the website to a particular language so as to accommodate that percentage of users. The Visits & Page view tracking report shows the number of visits, the number of page views and the average page views per visit over time. These figures can be collated to uncover trends, such as how your website traf-

fic fares over time, and if you have any peak periods. The Referral conversion report shows the various sources of traffic to the website. Through this, one can judge which links on the site are of the highest quality. The future of web analytics With the transition into the semantic web, websites are becoming more dynamic, client-centric and increasingly dependent on third party resources and remote shared services and data sources. This scenario presents a number of new challenges since a modern website may have web pages containing different content and behaving differently according to client information and preferences, thus making the collection of web statistics much more complicated. It also presents limitations since parts of the website may not be hosted on the same web server and certain remote resources may not allow reconfiguration or inclusion of tags. Future web analytic engines will need to rise to these challenges in order to provide a strong and holistic view of all website activity.

A report issued on Monday by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) found that 43% of Americans rarely or never get a good night’s sleep during weeknights. A full 60% say that they experience a sleep problem such as snoring, sleep walking, waking up too early or feeling un-refreshed almost every night. Busy lives, crying babies and stressful jobs are only part of the problem. Another factor is electronics, according to NSF’s study which polled over 1500 Americans between 13 and 64. According to Dr Charles Czeisler, a professor at Harvard Medical School, artificial light exposure between dusk and the time we go to bed at night suppresses release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, enhances alertness and shifts circadian rhythms to a later hour - making it more difficult to fall asleep. "Invasion of such alerting technologies into the bedroom may contribute to the high proportion of respondents who reported that they routinely get less sleep than they need" he

added. Most Americans admit to using electronic products – such as televisions, radios, computers, video games and mobile phones – in the hour or so before they go to bed. Almost every respondent (95%) use some sort of electronic devise at least a few nights a week within the hour before bed. Television is only part of the story. Six out of 10 people said that they use their computers (or laptops) at least a few nights a week during the hour before bed. More than half of the teenagers and people in their twenties use their computers almost every night before bed. "Over the last 50 years, we've seen how television viewing has grown to be a near constant before bed, and now we are seeing new information technology devices rapidly gaining the same status," says Lauren Hale, PhD, Stony Brook University Medical Center. "The higher use of these potentially more sleep-disruptive technologies among younger generations may have

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Over the last 50 years, we've seen how television viewing has grown to be a near constant before bed, and now we are seeing new information technology devices rapidly gaining the same status

serious consequences for physical health, cognitive development and other measures of wellbeing." The use of mobile phones, specifi-

cally sending/reading SMSs and talking on the phone, differs quite a lot according to age-group. More than half (56%) of teenagers and nearly half (42%) of those in their twenties say that they SMS every night or almost every night in the hour before bed. The use of mobile phones during the hour before bed by those between 30 and 45 years old drops to just 15%. Comparably, only 5% of the older generation use their mobile phone in the hour before bed. Furthermore, 9% of teenagers are woken up by their mobile phone (phone call, SMS or email) after they go to bed every night or almost every night. One in five of those in their twenties and those between 30 and 45 years (18%) say that this happens at least a few nights a week. Mobile phones and computers make our lives more productive and enjoyable but they may also be abused to the point that they contribute to getting less sleep at night leaving us functioning poorly the next day.

HP days in Malta In the coming days HP will be delivering a number of lectures at the University of Malta and MCAST. The lectures will be open for everyone but are primarily aimed at tertiary and vocational students, lecturers, teachers and researchers. During the lectures a variety of topics will be discussed, including HP technologies and products, Cloud computing, HP Labs and their research agenda and HP’s strategy and plans. HP’s first appointment is at the University of Malta on Wednesday 16 March. The lecture will be held at Hall

E at the Gateway Building between 12:30pm and 2pm. The second lecture, will be held at the Student House of the Institute of Information and Communication Technology at MCAST on Thursday 17 March between 2pm and 4pm. Both lectures will cover the same topics. Such lectures follow the multilateral agreement signed in December 2010 for the establishment of two HP Education Centres in Malta. The agreement was signed between MITA, the University, MCAST and HP. The lectures will provide a brief his-

tory of HP and of Silicon Valley – home of the world's largest technology corporations. The lectures will also give an overview of HP Labs – an advanced research group with some 600 researchers in seven locations throughout the world. An interesting topic covered in these lectures will be Cloud Computing and it’s capabilities in changing modern and future IT. Information on digital publishing and HP webOS will also be provided. These lectures are supported by MITA, the University of Malta and MCAST. Entrance is free.


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