the analysis of the influence of selected factors on website traffic

© 2011 Published by VŠB-TU Ostrava. All rights reserved. ER-CEREI, Volume 14: 37–49 (2011). ISSN 1212-3951 doi:10.7327/cerei.2011.03.03

The Analysis of the Influence of Selected Factors on Website Traffic

Martina HOĎÁKOVÁ, VŠB-TU Ostravai Zuzana NÉMETHOVÁ, VŠB-TU Ostravai

Abstract

Web traffic analysis and a correct interpretation of the results are essential to optimize the site and effective online communication, which is today for some organizations even more important than offline communication. The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of a time period and banner adverts on Web traffic of school newspaper monitored by using Google Analytics tool. The methodological basis is the use of statistical system, namely the correlation coefficient and ANOVA. The research results confirm the importance of planning, manag-ing and adapting the content of online communication to increase web traffic.

Keywords

Advertising on the Internet, ANOVA, Google Analytics, Pearson´s correlation coefficient, Spearman´s correlation coefficient, Website traffic Measurement.

JEL Classification: M31, M37

i Department of Marketing and Business, Faculty of Economics, VŠB-Technical University of Ostrava, Sokolská 33, 701 21 Ostrava, Czech Republic. [email protected] (corresponding author) The research is due to the support provided by the SGS projects of VŠB-TUO SP/2010164 and SP2011/152.

1. Introduction

Online advertising includes a variety of tools which are reflected in increased website traffic through its significant impact on consumer awareness while online advertising directly affects users of the internet and directly leads to higher website traffic. Although advertising can increase brand value due to its effec-tive use and also through awareness, no ads (online or offline) can clearly contribute to the immediate devel-opment of various brands of companies on the inter-net. Therefore, companies should concentrate, in terms of cost of online advertising, on building the traffic on the internet rather than building its own brand (see Ilfeld and Winer, 2002).

Today more than ever not be found on the internet is the same as if you did not exist. It is not enough to create a website, it is important to monitor website traffic and find out where web visitors come from,

how long they view the website, which pages are (not) interesting for the web visitors and other factors; the correct analysis and interpretation can help to web optimization and effective online communication.

Website traffic can be measured by the method of measurement according to the log file (e.g. AwStats) or by the method of measurement according to the active file, ie. dot (e.g. Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web analytics). For analysis it is recommended to use a combination of these two methods due to the fact that each has its advantages and disadvantages. Char-acteristics of these methods and other factors are discusssed more in the following section of this contribution.

Similar problems connected to measuring website traffic, was dealt with by Plaza (2010), who used Google Analytics to measure the performance of toursim websites. She analyzed the efficiency o

38 Ekonomická revue – Central European Review of Economic Issues 14, 2011

fentries (visit behavior and length of sessions) depend-ing on how they entered the website (direct visit, inlink entries, search engine visits) or by Wei Fang, who used Google Analytics to improve the content and design of the library main website so that the library´s website will better fit the needs of its cus-tomers. For more details on analysis of library´s website see e.g. Fang (2007).

The aim of our research is to determine the influ-ence of significant factors on the website. For this analysis we chose a school magazine website Sokolská 33 which has been operating on the domain www.sokolska33.cz for more than a year and a half. There is only one advertising banner which refers directly to this website. This banner is located on the website of the Faculty of Economics VŠB – TUO which is also the founder of this magazine. The banner changes in dependence on the update of the website content of the magazine, the changes and the length of display of the banner are not regular. Advertising is displayed on the homepage of the faculty website (www.ekf.vsb.cz).

To analyze the effects of factors on website traffic we decided to use the data from Google Analytics which has monitored closely website traffic of the journal since its launch. The main reason to choose Google Analytics is that website of school magazine Sokolska33 has already uploaded on the Google Analytics code before the start of our research. Google Analytics also has a simple user interface and allows features, which are required for our research. We did not have the reason to change the tool. This tool was also rated as the best in a performance snapshot. Another reason why we did not choose any of the other tools is that some tools are not as well known and widespread as Google Analytics. The advantage of Google Analytics is also that it is free. Google Analytics has met all our requirements. The length of the analysing period is twenty months. It is a period from the launch of the website magazine in November 2008 to July 2010. For our research we have defined working hypotheses on which we concentrate in the analytical part of this paper.

For data analysis we used statistical apparatus. We set the working hypothesis that we confirmed or refuted by the Pearson correlation coefficient and Spearman's coefficient of serial correlation and ANOVA, in dependence on the character of the data.

Web analysis changes as fast as the requests from the analysts. Google Analytics entered the market four years ago. Despite the fact that this tool is free it has not proven to fall behind the competition (see Fisher and Johnson, 2008).

The start of free tools for analysing website by us-ing search engines can serve as a main marketing tool

and can help managers get online information. Ana-lysing of data collected by Google Analytics or competitive Yahoo Web Analytics helps webmasters configure as their websites user-friendly and also in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as more effective (see Plaza, 2010).

In the first part of the contribution we present the basic theoretical knowledge to measure website traffic and brief description of used tool for measuring website traffic. In the analytical part of this post is the analysis of individual factors and their impact on website traffic. To prove the relationship between variables Correlation coefficient and ANOVA are mainly used. In conclusion the key findings from the analysis are summarized.

2. Website traffic Measurement

Web analytics, according to WAA (The Web Analyt-ics Association), measures, collects, analyzes and provides data from the Internet for understanding and optimizing websites (see Jansen, 2009).

Analysing website traffic, monitoring behavior of web visitors, tracking incoming links and monitoring ad campaigns are the main marketing activities on the internet. The output of the web analyzes are reports of the data from the internet. This analysis provides the basis for decisions and the improvement of the inter-net marketing of companines. For more details on web analytics see e.g. Janouch (2010).

There are many factors that may affect the website traffic. One of the common principles in marketing theory, framework of marketing mix follows the structure of 16 factors that affects website traffic. These are the factors – product (quality, uniqueness, relevance, personalization, branding), price (the price level, price discrimination, business model, payment system), place (interactivity, organization website, navigation, accessibility, timeliness) and promotion (credibility, website visibility). Some factors are linked (see Wolk and Theysohn, 2007).

For the company it is very important to know the behavior of visitors on website. Web analysis exam-ines the dependence of advertising campaigns, which are placed on the internet, on website traffic. There are also deviations from the average rate of traffic of the company website.

The analysis is realized in order to find the intensi-ty of using the website and its efficiency to be able to find if the company has met set objectives. Using such information allows changes of website, offers, adver-tisements, prices, etc. In comparison with traditional marketing, the analysis measures the efficiency or ROI of the activities on the internet.

M. Hoďáková, Z. Némethová – The Analysis of the Influence of Selected Factors on Website Traffic

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The data of the overal or partial website traffic says nothing about the success of the company web-site. As well as the selection of the target group of customers and services also the company web presen-tation must be targeted at the right segment of visitors (potential customers).

The aim of the analysis of website traffic is visitors segmentation into homogeneous groups which are necessary to be analyzed separately (ie, unique visi-tors, number of returning visitors, the number of exits, which search engines visitors used, where visitors join, etc.). Analysis of website traffic monitors not only the number of web visitors but also characterizes who are the real website visitors. For more details on Google Analytics e.g. see Clifton (2009).

For the analysis of website traffic two methods are used most frequently. The principle of the first meth-od, the measurement according to the log file is that the log file records all web activities of web server. The method provides information about requirements for the server and records answers to these require-ments.

The method of measurement according to the ac-tive file, ie. dot uses JavaScript code which is placed into HTML web pages. Subsequently, it monitors and records all activities of visitors on the website.

According to Janouch (2010) it is suitable to use a combination of these methods for the analysis because they all have advantages and disadvantages.

The tool of measurement according to the log file is for example a product AWStats, which is mostly used free by providers. Very widespread tool for the measurement method according to the active file is a product Google Anatylicts (see below).

By using analytical tools we can segment web visi-tors into groups, according to whether web visitor entered the website from search engines (from which search engines), which keywords were used, whether the first visit was from paid campaigns (we can find price for a new web visitor, then we can compare different campaigns to each other), which visitors are most profitable, etc.

The analysis of website traffic is realized in several stages, ie. before a new ad campaign, during and after its completion. The results are then evaluated and compared between several advertising campaigns.

Fitzgerald (2007) concentrated on analysis of web analytics softwares. Based on this analysis six best softwares for website traffic were chosen. Google Analytics was regarded as the best by A performance snapshot; Omniture SearchCenter was regarded as the best by understanding the customers; CFanalytics was considered as the best by fighting click fraud; Bet-terPPC AdTest was regarded as the best by perfecting

the pitch, Engine Rankings search was considered best according to boosting the WebTrends' WebPosition 4, according to coordinating ad campaigns was consid-ered the Coremetrics Online Analytics. For more details on these softwares, see e.g. Fitzgerald (2007).

2.1 Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most popular free web analytics software. This tool is also known because it has very clear and understandable user interface. Google Analytics tracks the behavior of web visitors on the website from click to conversion. Google Analytics includes several features which show and analyze the results of traffic on the website.

The primary benefit of Google Analytics is the in-formation on how web visitors found the website and how extensively websites are used. Web visitors could come to the website from ads, keywords, search engines and e-mails. The company may improve the ROI of its website, increase conversions, and make more money on the website using this information. These results also allow company to target their ads on the internet in more eficient way, encourage their marketing activities and create websites with higher conversion rate, which is one of the main objectives of examining the website traffic.

Conversion means a situation where the website visitor becomes a customer. Generally this is a situa-tion when the web user sends order form, pays online for the goods or only sends query through contact form. The aim of this analysis is to measure the profitability of website or efficiency of advertising campaign, in which the company has invested. In this analysis we followed indicators such as number of customers in the total number of users, which web browsers are generating the most customers, what key words the web visitors used and from what web browser they converted to customers, which advertis-ing campaigns transform web visitors to customers (efficiency advertising campaigns), the most demand-ed products/services or groups of products/services, etc. Conversion yet cannot be used at website www.sokolska33.cz.

Plaza (2010) codified, on the basis of time series analysis with Google Analytics, a few rules that we consider to be consistent with our analysis: Rule No. 1 – Returning visitors browse deeper into the website and stay longer (longer time spent on website/a greater number of pages viewed per one visit). Rule No. 2 – The lower the bounce rate (the number of error visits) the longer the visit length (with regard to the time spent on the website or the number of pages viewed per one visit). Rule No. 3 – The lower the bounce rate, the higher the return visit rate (see Plaza, 2010).


Products of Google Analytics

The services, which may be used in Google Analytics, are, for example, analysis and optimisation (Website Optimiser, webmasters tools, Insights for Search), advertising (AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick, YouTube, Adplanner) and commerce and enterprise search (CSEs, checkout).

Google Analytics users

Google Analytics can be used by anyone who manag-es website on the internet, it can be small or large website company.

The service is a very effective tool which provides information for managers (it allows one to select the most effective marketing activities, estimate trends or patterns of the website traffic, identify profitable customers or customer segments), marketing special-ists (they can find where web visitors come from, what visitors do on the website, how they can increase the number of conversions, which keywords are used by potential customers, which is the most effective online advertising) and developers of the website (it can reveal the reasons of web visitor departures).

The principle of Google Analytics

One of the main principles of operation of the Google Analytics is anonymous observation of web visitors and how they use the website. It also contains infor-mation on where the visitors come from, what they do on the website, how long they remain and if some of conversion objectives are achieved. In Google Analyt-ics we can also monitor data of e-commerce combined with information on conversions and campaigns. This gives the user all information about the effectiveness of realized advertising campaigns.

All outputs of the analysis are available to the user in clear detailed visual reports that can be exported to various applications such as Microsoft Office Excel.

Indicators of Google Analytics

From Google Analytics software we can derive indicators, such as who, when, and how visited a website. Among the significant monitored indicators in terms of Google Analytics belong the number of visitors, number of unique visitors, an overview of visitors (the number of new and returning visitors), the number of page views, average web page views, rate of exits, timeliness of visits, loyalty visits, an over-view of languages, time spent on the website, depth of visits, an overview of user defined, sources (direct, referring websites, search engines), content (the number of page views), a list of objectives (an over-view of the conversions).

Among the other monitored indicators are for ex-ample the type of used browser, type of operating

system, a combination of browser and operating system, how many colors on the screen the visitors can see, used screen resolution, the version of Flash, Java support, internet providers, domain name, con-nection speed etc.

AwStats

AwStats is another web analytics tool. This tool evaluates and displays statistics of access on the website. Statistics are evaluated regularly every 24 hours during the night hours the previous day. AwStats is a freely available tool that generates advanced web, streaming, ftp and e-mail statistics to graphical form. This method, the measurement ac-cording to the log file works as a CGI from the com-mand line and shows all available information con-tained in the log on a few graphical web pages. AwStats provides the summary statistics, which clearly show us where and how many visitors came to our website. It is also possible to monitor the summary statistics, but also the statistics of the particular months of the year, statistics of the days of selected months, average statistics of days of the weeks or average statistics of hours.

Yahoo! Web analytics

Yahoo! Web analytics is a tool similar to Google analytics. It provides free web analytics solution for every company. In undertaking this analysis each company will get the view of demographics and psychographic structure of its web users. The aim of Yahoo! web analytics is to divide the web users into different segments. These segments are important for managing advertising campaigns and because of the faster and easier targeting of the on-line marketing. Analysis helps each company coordinate its marketing campaigns on the Internet to target segments of users.

Piwik

Piwik is a PHP MySQL software program. Compared to previous analytical tools the difference is that one can download and then install their program on his own web server. This program will enable company to provide detailed reports on the website in real time – what web browser was used, what key words were used, what language users speak, a popular web pages users, etc.

Other tools

Among other tools of measuring website traffic there are Yahoo Web Analytics, Piwik, Ommiture, Weblog Expert, Webalizer, Lyris HQ Web Analytics Solution, WebTrends Analytics, Site Meter, Coremetrics, etc.


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2.2 Advertising on the internet

Online advertising differs from offline advertising and it allows more efficient targeting of ads, flexibility of use, clear and easy evaluating the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Also online advertising offers interactivity (see Jahodová and Přikrylová, 2010).

Internet as a medium has the following characteris-tics – offers a huge range of content, features possibil-ity of a quick update, the global effect, has the ability of very precise targetting and personalized content communication, is interactive, fast and continuous, has easy measurability of results, and evaluate the effec-tiveness of advertisement etc.

The trend of online advertising is a term of Behav-ioral Targeting. It is a tool that allows the introduction of new advertising systems, which help to the most effective targeting of advertising campaigns. This method works with the behavior and motivations of web users while the movement of web pages, the number of returns, etc. studied here in detail. Visitors relevant advertising campaign can be done on the basis of the collection of information about individual website.

Advertising on the internet offers many ad-vantages, for example a function of a multimedia presentation (text, sound, images, video, animation, etc.), flexibility in choice of time and extent of adver-tisement, offer of an unlimited number of products and services, selective media (focusing on a target group of users), rate of the immediate response to online advertising, scientifically measurable impact of online advertising)

The aim of online advertising is to influence the buying behavior of potential customers (see Blažková, 2005). On the Internet each part of the website can be advertising.

Most often we can meet with a banner advertising. Banner advertising is particularly suitable for the presentation of new products, promotion of products which are rarely search by using key words, to in-crease brand awareness, to support events, to differen-tiate brands from competitors, etc.

A special type of advertising is a contextual adver-tising which is displayed in content (context) network of website, not in the search network of web search engines, but on partner websites. The principle of contextual advertising is that its text is displayed on a web page, whose content is closely related to the keyword of the advertisement. Importantly the content of the message does not correspond with content of the website on which it is located. Contextual advertis-ing is suitable for products which are not too familiar to the user searching through web search engines. In recent years, sales of text ads have substantially

increased and have had a large percentage of the revenues of major internet portals.

Sponsored links are marketing based on web search engines. Sponsored link of the web search engines is displayed in the graphical presentation and is located on the first page of the search engines before the unpaid links. On the internet there is a huge number of web pages. Discipline of search engine marketing or marketing based on web search engines, is used to find a wbside of a company without any dificulties.

Another form of advertising is sponsorship of website. It means that for the money agreed before hand the provider provides location on a website for a logo of the advertiser as the sponsor server.

Advertising can also be blind the existence of web-sites, which then contain a light color advertisement, non-traditional advertising such as viral marketing, buzz marketing and advergaming. Another form of advertising is guerrilla marketing which is related to the placement of advertising formats in a way which gives the impression of a part of the Web. In fact, it is only a fictitious blog or article supporting the product.

Very popular advertisement is email marketing that sends advertisements through the e-mail. It is very cheap, easily accessible and highly effective advertis-ing solutions. The approach of companies to email marketing is different. A company which sends e-mails at the request of the addressee chooses effective form of authorization email, while the company which sends e-mails to all target users without their permis-sion chooses the path of risk – they are sending unsolicited emails or spam.

3. Analysis of the influence of selected factors on website traffic

We mentioned that we used school magazine Sokolská 33 which was monitored by Google Analytics for the period from November 2008 to July 2010 to analyze data of website traffic.

For the analysis we have established several work-ing hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: There is no influence of the day of a week on the website traffic;

Hypothesis 2: There is no influence of summer va-cation on the website traffic;

Hypothesis 3: There is no influence of advertising banners on the website traffic;

Hypothesis 4: There is no influence of the length of banner display on the website traffic;

Hypothesis 5: There is no influence of the subject of advertising banner on the website traffic.


Figure 1 The average website traffic for each day of the week

When we are discussing particular hypotheses we are interested not only in indicators of overall website traffic but in some cases we also focus on finding differences between the behavior of new and returning visitors.

3.1 Effect of the time period on the website traffic

Analysis of the impact of a time period on web traffic can be seen from two angles. We are interested into proving or refuting the impact of the week day and of the summer holidays in this matter. These two aspects of time are the most important from the perspective of the site target group – students and teachers of Faculty of Economics and their interest in the school maga-zine.

Influence of the day of a week on the website traffic

Figure 1 shows the average total website traffic and website traffic for each segment, i.e. a new and return-ing visitors. The value of the average total website traffic ranges from 36 (Saturday) to 69 (Tuesday) visits per day. Important is also the value of the

standard deviation, which is relatively high at all averages, it reflects higher variability of data.

Figure 1 shows that in the first working days the website traffic is the highest, at weekends the website traffic is weaker regardless the segment of web visi-tors. We verified hypothesis 1 – there is no influence of the day of the week on the website traffic – with using analysis of variance – ANOVA. To calculate we used statistical software SPSS. For more about ANOVA see Řezanková (2010). The result of the analysis is shown in Table 1. At 1% level of signifi-cance we can reject the null hypothesis of equality mean values of individual choices, both for overall website traffic and for both segments (new and return-ing visitors). Day of the week has an important role in website traffic of magazine Sokolská 33, in the first half of the working week website is visited the most, both total as well as in the case of both segments.

Influence of summer vacation on the website traffic

For evaluation of the second working hypothesis: There is no influence of summer vacation on the

Table 1 ANOVA (day of the week and website traffic)

Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Visits (all visitors) Between Groups 88 173.829 6 14 695.638 5.178 0.000

Within Groups 1 739 827.492 613 2 838.218

Total 1 828 001.321 619

Visits (new visitors) Between Groups 23 810.632 6 3 968.439 4.942 0.000

Within Groups 492 268.172 613 803.048

Total 516 078.805 619

Visits (returning visitors)

Between Groups 20 530.265 6 3 421.711 4.640 0.000

Within Groups 452 024.669 613 737.398

Total 472 554.934 619


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website traffic, we had to divide the calendar year into two periods, from 1st of September to 30th of June (school year) and from 1st of July to 31st of August (holidays). Although it completely does not copy exam periods and vacation periods of students of Faculty of Economics, we also took into account another factors, such as earlier end of the tests and regular term of graduation – State Examination. We also took partially into account heterogeneous struc-ture of visitors, which includes not only students and teachers of the faculty.

Table 2 shows that the average value of website traffic during the holidays is significantly (more than three times) lower than the average website traffic over the school year. It is for both total website traffic and website traffic of the faculty website. It is im-portant to mention again the high value of standard deviation from average for the school year. Here is a high variability of measured website traffic during the school year.

Table 2 Summary of average website traffic over the school year and vacation and standard deviation

Average website traffic

Deviation from the average total website traffic

School year 50.56 51.87 Vacation 18.41 11.66

For evaluating the second working hypothesis we used ANOVA. The results are clearly presented in Table 3. At 1% level of significance we can reject the hypothesis of equality mean values of both choices. Thus, there is a significant difference between the website traffic over the school year and the website traffic during school vacation. We rejected the second working hypothesis.

Table 3 ANOVA (website traffic and vacation/school year)

Sum of Squares

df Mean

Square F Sig.

Between Groups

98 297.209 1 98 297.209 35.120 0.000

Within Groups

1 729 704.112 618 2 798.874

Total 1 828 001.321 619

3.2 Influence of advertising banners on the web-site traffic

The analysis of the impact of advertising banners on the website traffic of the school newspaper was divided into two parts. At first, the impact of the banner as a source of web traffic is examined and then it is considered which banner content would be more attractive for the visitors and if the content itself has an influence on the web traffic.

Influence of advertising banner as a source of website traffic

To determine the influence of advertising banner, located on the homepage of Faculty of Economics website, on the website traffic of school magazine Sokolská 33, we used Pearson correlation coefficient. More on this coefficient, see Řezanková, 2010. We used SPSS to calculate the reset which can be seen in Table 4. The value of the correlation coefficient is 0.993. The closer the value is to 1, the higher the positive linear relationship between the examined variables is. At 1% level of significance we can reject the null hypothesis: Pearson correlation coefficient is equal to 0. We therefore measured a high degree of dependence between website traffic through advertis-ing banner and overall website traffic. We say that there is influence of advertising banners on the web-site traffic and we reject the third working hypothesis.

Table 4 Correlation

Visits Visits from

www.ekf.vsb.cz

Visits Pearson Correlation

1 0.993**

Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000

N 620 620

Visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz

Pearson Correlation

0.993** 1


N 620 620

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Strong positive influence on the total number of visits of magazine website is demonstrated on the Figure 2. Grey part – visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz – nearly copies the total website traffic.

The next step was to verify the fourth working hy-pothesis, i.e. there is no influence of the length of banner display on the website traffic. In this case we compared visits from the website of the Faculty of Economics through banner and the length of banner display.

Figure 3 shows the three values at once. Grey area represents the time series of the share of visits coming from banner located on www.ekf.vsb.cz on the total number of visits. The second value represents the overall long-term average of this ratio, a value of 79%. This value is very high and again proves that on the magazine website visitors come mainly through the banner located on the Faculty website. The third value is only enhanced data which means publishing banner on the Faculty website and are shown as dotted line. The first date of location of banner was


Figure 2 Timeline of the total website traffic and visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz on the website Sokolská33

Figure 3 Publication of new banners and the ratio of visits from the website of the faculty at all visits including long-term average

0

50

100

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200

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300

350

400N

umbe

r of

Vis

its

Visits Visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

The ratio of visits from the website of the faculty at all visits Long-term average of the ratio


45

Figure 4 Average visits from the website www.ekf.vsb.cz and standard deviation from 1st to 187th day banner display

14th of November 2008 (see Table 6) which represents the beginning of axis x.

When we compare all the three values in Figure 3, it shows that on the day of publication of an advertis-ing banner on the Faculty website, the percentage of visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz does not drop below average value of 79%. In this case we confirmed the influence of advertising on the website traffic journal.

Figure 4 shows the average number of visits which come from the Faculty website, in dependence on which day the banner is displayed on the website. Start of the x-axis is the first day of banner display. The figure shows a downward trend of average. For the first 59 days of banner display we have data from at least two advertising campaigns but after 59th day, data is only from one ad campaign. Nevertheless, other factors can occur, such as beginning of the school year, which occasionally causes the rise of website traffic – i.e. click on the website of the maga-zine.

Psychological limit of 100 visitors of the average website traffic is exceeded only in the first two days of the banner. If the editor’s office wanted to maintain the limit of daily clicks from ads on the website faculty they would have to update the banner regularly every two days. This time period is too short to be able to create a new banner and updated website contents so frequently. Taking into account that on average 79% of all visits of the web pages of the magazine are the visitors from www.ekf.vsb.cz the limit could be 79 visitors arriving from the website of the Faculty. That would be maintained for at least average website traffic of magazine limit of 100 visitors per day. Psychological limit of 79 visits is provided on the first eight days of banner display. The standard deviation reaches high values which repre-sents a high variability observed website traffic, i. e. that in fact the actual value of the website traffic is very different from the average. So we cannot clearly say that the first days of banner display will have indeed highest rate of click.

Table 5 Correlation (day of banner display and visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz)

Day of banner display Visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz

Day of banner display

Correlation Coefficient 1.000 –0.666**


N 458 458


Correlation Coefficient –0.666** 1.000


N 458 458 ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

1 8 15 22 29 36 43 50 57 64 71 78 85 92 99 106

113

120

127

134

141

148

155

162

169

176

183

Mean of visits from www.ekf.vsb.czStd. deviation of visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz


To determine the influence of the length of banner display on website traffic we used Spearman's coeffi-cient of serial correlation. More on this coefficient, see Řezanková, 2010. Before the actual calculation, we had to clean the data on cases for which we have not at least three measurements. The value of the correla-tion coefficient is shown in Table 5. At 1% level of significance we reject the hypothesis which means that the coefficient of correlation has the value of 0. Between the length of banner location on the home page of the website of the Faculty of Economics and the number of visitors coming from this website is a negative linear relationship. The longer the banner is displayed, the lower the ratio of click from the website of the Faculty of Economics is. Our fourth working hypothesis, which reads: There is no influence of the length of banner display on the website traffic, was rejected.

The effect of focus advertising banners on the website traffic

For the analysis of focus banner we had to divide all banners into groups according to their focus. We created three basic groups, i.e. advertising on the printed edition of the magazine, changes of the web-site (in terms of new sections, redesign of website) and advertising of articles related to the events for

students and teachers. Each division is shown in Table 6.

Table 6 shows that the banners were displayed for various length of time. In our calculations we took into account only the first 14 days of banner display. For this reason a longer delay between banner ex-change (eg summer vacation) did not affect the results. The previous calculations show that the editors should change banners every 8 days, the maximum length of 14 days we consider sufficient for further analysis.

With using ANOVA we examined whether the subject of banner influences the website traffic of magazine. We wanted to know if there is a difference between the behavior of individual segments, if returning visitors are interested in other subject than new visitors. The results are shown in Table 7.

At 1% level of significance we reject the hypothe-sis of equal mean values of individual choices, both for overall website traffic and for both segments (new and returning visitors). The subject of the banner is important for the evaluation of advertising as a signif-icant source of attracting visitors to the webiste of the magazine. Table 8 shows that for the web visitors the banners which relate to the events for teachers and students are the most interesting, regardless whether they are new visitors or returning.

Table 6 An overview of banners located on the website www.ekf.vsb.cz

Days Subject of advertising banner Group of subject of advertising banners

Day and date of publication of banner

1 31 The first issue (1/08) Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine Fr, 14-Nov-2008

2 39 The second issue (2/08) Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine Mo, 15-Dec-2008

3 6 Lecture of Zeman Advertising on the articles and events Fr, 23-Jan-2009

4 13 Advertising Online billboard Changes of the website Th, 29-Jan-2009

5 7 Magazine launch Advertising on the articles and events We, 11-Feb-2009

6 12 New section: Culture Changes of the website We, 18-Feb-2009

7 11 The third issue (1/09) Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine Mo, 2-Mar-2009

8 45 New section: Sport Changes of the website Fr, 13-Mar-2009

9 23 Majales and sports day Advertising on the articles and events Mo, 27-Apr-2009

10 187 The fourth issue (2/09) Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine We, 20-May-2009

11 49 The fifth issue (3/09) Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine Mo, 23-Nov-2009

12 59 The sixth issue (4/09) Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine Mo, 11-Jan-2010

13 33 The seventh issue (1/10) (2 alternating banners)

Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine Th, 11-Mar-2010

14 7 A workshop was held Advertising on the articles and events Tue, 13-Apr-2010

15 17 A new website (2 banners) Changes of the website Tue, 20-Apr-2010

16 34 Majáles 2010 Advertising on the articles and events Fr, 7-May-2010

17 48* State Examination 2010 Advertising on the articles and events Th, 10-Jun-2010

* Number is not final, ad is running after the end of the period


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Banners with the lowest ratio of click are banners relating to printed edition of the magazine. For return-ing visitors the changes of the website (adding new features, redesign) are more interesting (average 39) than for new visitors (average 29). The fifth working hypothesis, i.e. there is no influence of the subject of advertising banner on the website traffic, was again rejected. Subject of advertising banner has a signifi-cant influence on the website traffic.

4. Discussion

The analysis of website traffic shows a significant influence of the advertising banner on the website traffic from linked website. On average less than 80 % of all the visits of the magazine get on the website through the banner. To maintain a minimum daily ratio of visits, i.e. 100 visits, it would be appropriate to update advertising banner located on the website every 8 days. It is a time limit beyond which the curve of the average website traffic of Faculty website falls below value of 80 visits and overall website traffic falls below 100 visits per day.

It is obvious that there are sites whose web traffic is dependent on online marketing communications activities. There is no need for the potential visitors to

find the website themselves, but they may be attracted to the site by its interesting content, and thuse by definitely well-aimed and created communication activity. It can be said that websites with possibly interesting content which do not use online marketing communications may be confronted with a low web traffic simply just because the visitors are not able to find them. Certainly there is an importance of the offline marketing communications as well. It is recommended to apply the everywhere you look approach, which means that each organization owning the website lists the URL address of its website on all their promotional materials, advertisements for prod-ucts, etc. This approach may support the direct entry of web addresses of the organizations and therefore also the growth of the total traffic site.

It is also important that web developers think about why the visitor should return to the site. It is too expensive and inefficient to attract a visitor who will visit the site only once with no intend to return. If the site content is updated frequently and at the same time it is attractive enough for the visitors, they can learn to return to the site. This may again show an increase in web traffic by using the direct web address entering as the visitors will be interested to find out what is new on the site.

Table 7 ANOVA (visits and subject of banners)

Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz (all visitors)

Between Groups 364 612.511 2 182 306.256 97.467 0.000

Within Groups 1 154 057.489 617 1 870.434

Total 1 518 670.000 619

Visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz (new visitors)

Between Groups 83 925.187 2 41 962.593 76.963 0.000

Within Groups 336 405.484 617 545.228

Total 420 330.671 619

Visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz (returning visitors)

Between Groups 100 883.471 2 50 441.736 101.250 0.000

Within Groups 307 381.916 617 498.188

Total 408 265.387 619

Table 8 Average number of visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz according to focus banner

Visits from

www.ekf.vsb.cz (all visitors)

Visits from www.ekf.vsb.cz (new visitors)


(returning visitors)

Advertising on the printed edition of the magazine 29.07 14.46 14.60

Changes of the website 67.17 28.57 38.97

Advertising on the articles and events 86.99 43.44 43.12

Total 46.00 22.24 23.73


The visitor may also wait for some kind of a com-munication message – a momentum that could per-suade to the return visit and entice to its content. Therefore it is efficient to allow site visitors to add the site to their favourite sites, and where the web site target group is the population aged between 12–35 years, to share the web site in the social network used or propose the usage of RSS service. Thus the visitors can return to the site much more easily and in some cases they may be informed about the news on the web site in other cost-effective manners. Of course a great role is still played by the content of the com-munication alone.

Editors should focus on the banners focused on events for students or teachers. These banners were generally the most attractive. As the banner on the new printed issue of the magazine is not so interesting for visitors, I recommend to editors to rotate banner contents with other banner so that it can maintain a certain level of the website traffic and it could attract visitors who are not interested in printed issue so much. To get returning visitors the banners should present the informatik about website changes even though it will not be a radical change. Examples can be the new sections, new regular articles, the use of social networks and other actions which will bring new information to the visitors, but also new opportu-nities – extension of what the website could deliver so far.

Another part of our recommendations relates to a time period. We recommend that the editors place new banners in the first three working days. In these days there is the highest website traffic. Combination of the most popular days and first days of placing the banner makes the number of clicks the highest, the combination of these factors could get the highest effect in the form of increasing website traffic. For the vacation period (July, August) we do not recommend to editors to needlessly invest in resources to improve the website traffic which is at a very low level in this period, but they should rather spend time by planning activities for the next school year when the interest in the website of magazine is growing.

Proper timing of online marketing communication activity may save the web site operator a considerable amount of money. Each site should have clearly defined target group at which it is aimed. Then the web content and all communication activities should be adapted to meet the demands of this target group. The web traffic analysis can help the operator catego-rize the behavior of their visitors and on the basis of ascertained outcomes the effective timing of online communication activity can be established so that its efficiency is of a great value.

5. Conclusion

The paper dealt with demonstrating the influence of time and the banner ads on web site traffic by using a statistical system. The results show that the timing and attractive content of online communication message are very important for increasing the web site traffic. The target group of the site that was used as groundwork for this paper is mainly formed by stu-dents and teachers of the Faculty of Economics. A summary of results and subsequent recommenda-tions can therefore be used by the organizations that are focused on the recognized target audience.

The online marketing communication activity should be planned for one of the first three working days of the month with an exception of the summer holidays, when there is no effective endeavor to promote education and educational institutions as there is a great lack of interest in the related infor-mation. However, it is very important to aim the content of the message at activities and events that are meant for the target group. The possibility of finding out what to attend or to gain in their favour or where to find a reference about them after the event is ended, for example in the photo or article, is the most attrac-tive aspect for this target group.

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Additional sources

www.ekf.vsb.cz www.sokolska33.cz

the analysis of the influence of selected factors on website traffic

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