Eyetracking
What you most need to know

Let’s take a look at rangit.com‘s site statistics for the month of August 2007. I use the free Google Analytics. Everyone ought to, actually.

1. Visitors Overview



A traffic overview page should exist in all web analytics. It allows you to get to know your site’s traffic and their communication with your site’s structure and design. From here, everyone should be able to delve deeper to diagnose the contrasting visitor subdivisions and examine the influence that produces the quality of average page views, time on site, bounce rates, etc.

2. Countries Overlay



Know the people that you are attracting to your site. Get a clear picture of the visits, page views and quality measures of your site’s progress and achievements by geographic region. The general info gathered on this page is enough to help make several important decisions.

Most websites have advertisements. Knowing the origin of the majority of visitors will help you in getting advertisers. For example, if the majority of visitors are from the US, then it is relevant to sign up advertisers targeting the US market.

Another thing is, if you are a blogger from Singapore and majority of the visitors are from US then it helps to know when to strategically publish your daily articles. For example, 8am in the morning US time, to cater to the lunch break crowd.

3. New vs Returning Visitors



Large crowds of new visitors generally mean that you are pretty good at getting traffic to your site while large crowds of returning visitors would suggest that the site content is engaging enough for visitors to come back.

The result of your effort is in the form of this graph. It indicates the success of your intent. Let’s say you’ve added a lot of related content, links on all your pages at the start of the month and update your site daily. If you hit high on return visits, then it’s good news. Otherwise, keep improving your site. There are always forums where you can get helpful opinions and suggestions. Try DigitalPoint.

4. Language



The language shown in the report is the language configured on their computers. I know from my statistics that 80% of visitors to this site prefer English and differ with others in site usage, and other measurements. Awareness of the language used helps in creating favorable content and fully utilizing your marketing spend. This report complements the countries overlay. Different countries have different populations speaking different languages that present crucial market targeting opportunities.

5. Visits



This is the most basic measure of any website analytics application. It’s the measurement of how well you’ve promoted your site. Here are some examples on the useful stuff you can get out of the visits report.

• You may have changed your keyword purchases and would like to know if it landed you more visitors or not. This report is your answer.
• You may want to know if stopping certain ads would affect your visitors. This report is your answer.
• You may have started a marketing campaign and want to know the effectiveness magnitude. This report is your answer.
• You may have moved moved up in search engine rankings for a particular search term and want to know if it improved your traffic. This report is your answer.

6. Pages / Visit



If you get between 1-2 page views per visit, relax, it’s normal. About 55% of others fall into the same category. If your site has been setup to interact, then you should be getting high page views. Only 2 things will cause high average page views.

• The right visitors.
• Quality, effective, original content.

If your page views are below 1.5 pages per visit, then you fall into the lower portion of the normal population. Low average page views is an indication to focus more time on the 2 factors mentioned.

7. Bounce Rate



The measurement of how many visitors leave after viewing the entrance page. The lower the bounce rate, the higher the quality of the visit. Average bounce rates vary according to websites and any average given would have so much variance it would be meaningless. Move at your own pace, improving it from month to month. 2 things that influences bounce rates.

• Marketing. Whether if the campaign is bringing in the desired visitors or not.
• The landing page. If the visitor enjoys what you have to offer, and you manage to hold their attention with an informative, attractive and user friendly website design, you will have low bounce rates.

8. Browsers / OS



Knowing which browsers and operating systems that your visitors use the most allows you to optimize your site’s technical capabilities to make it more engaging and user friendly which usually leads to higher conversion rates. This report serves as a reminder to make sure that your web site works for that browser.

This site’s visitors use 22 different browsers and 10 different operating systems. I personally check my site on Firefox, IE, Safari and Opera only, since they make up 97.42% out of all visitors. And if you ever want to cross check your website across all other browsers, OS or screen resolutions, you can do so easily at BrowserShots.

9. Screen Resolutions



Looking at my screen resolutions report will tell me that it is time to change my theme. Currently, it’s width is at 780 pixels to accommodate the 800×600 users who now make up only less than 3% of my visitors. As you can see 9 out of the top 10 users have screen resolutions above 1000 pixels wide. I have already found myself a super, duper cool, smashing new theme for myself. I’ll be customizing it this weekend and hope to roll it out by next week. =)

10. Connection Speeds



From the report, I know that around 3% of my visitors are on dial up. About 60% are on cable and DSL, which means that it is alright to have media running around without thinking too much. If you noticed, most of my articles are accompanied by visuals and each image averages to about 65kB. For broadband users, especially cable, it’s like taking a walk in the park.

However, if a majority of your users are made up of dial up, try minimizing images and keep your main content as text rich as possible.

11. Traffic Overview



The traffic trends report. Get an overview of your site’s performance here.

• Direct traffic comes from typing the URL into the browser or clicking on the browser’s bookmark. As long as it comes from the person itself and not from any other site, it’s considered direct traffic.
• Referring sites are visitors who came upon your site from another site. As long as it is not direct nor from a search engine, then it is considered referred.
• Search engine traffic consist of visitors who came from the search engine result page.

12. Direct Traffic



This type of website traffic could be potential customers looking for you because they heard of your site from a discussion forum, saw your ad somewhere offline in print or on television, or they might have found you by directly typing in your web site address. A good web site statistical application should allow you to pit direct traffic over city, visitor type, etc. Traffic of this type spend more time on the site if compared against other types. If you have offline campaigns running, high percentage of direct traffic is an indicator of success.

13. Referral Traffic



Visitors coming from other websites. This is about the quantity of links to your site. To me, referral traffic is the 2nd hardest type of traffic to get because it is influenced 100% by the quality of the content on your web site. If it is interesting, cool, attractive, original then you’ll naturally get link love. Recycling material will most often lead a person away to the source.

The 2 direct benefits of referral traffic is that it heightens the awareness of the existence of your website and it also increases the value of the site. Directly. Moreover, you will definitely receive a regular source of traffic from this type of traffic.

There are so many ways to push up this type of traffic but the most importantly, as I have said before is the content. Traffic maketh not the website, but website maketh the traffic. Here are some examples to bolster your site’s referral percentage.

Try building relationships. Leave constructive comments around blogs and forums that you enjoy visiting. Write more than 10 words. For example, a constructive comment at the bottom of this article may sound like, ‘Holy shit, Chris! Your suggestions and ideas and explanations are extraordinarily profound. The part I like best is about referral traffic. Everyone who owns a website should read this piece of yours’. =P

You can even write articles for others. Be a guest blogger in other blogs. As long as your guest article rocks, your referral traffic will rock too.

14. Search Engine Traffic aka. Organic Traffic



The most important and hardest type of traffic. This determines whether if you have a successfully sociable or a lonely website. It’s a BIG deal to get naturally motivated high search engine traffic. It is necessary for any website that intends to generate sales or be noticed. Everyone who uses the internet uses search engines, as they are the tools that provide you what you are looking for. Always aim for the high search engine rankings, like getting on the first page, which will eventually bring up your search engine traffic because too few look past the first page.

Search engine listings are the best as they are the most relevant and free at the same time. As a result they are the most beneficial in 4 ways.

• You get stable, steady, constant, regular traffic.
• Pay nuts. Save on advertising. Build dollar note mountains in your room.
• Get targeted traffic. Visitors get what they are looking for from you. You become of value to the search society.
• More sales = more profits. More profits = more dollar note mountains.

And nothing else will bring you the desired result except by understanding and applying these 2 rules of thumb.

• Unduplicated, unique content is king.
• SEO techniques that are solid, white hat and full of quality. I promise you will be 35 steps ahead of others if you follow these 35 simple SEO directions carefully.

15. Keywords



As you can see, above are the top 10 keywords that brought in organic traffic to rangit.com in August 2007. Go ahead and try it. Enter any of the keywords above into the search engine and tell me what you find. =) And that, my friends, is an example of a successful organic traffic keyword listing done by simply applying the 2 rules of thumb above.

As of writing, I know my article is better than any of the top 10 listed. However, a good website statistical software should be able to allow anyone to segment search traffic by search engine or any other factor. A better one, like Google Analytics, even allows me to segment referrals from a particular keyword by city and visitor type.

This report acts as an indicator of success to your site’s search engine rankings for the keywords listed. If your site is small, don’t look at the percentage of visitors. Instead, look at the number of visitors coming in for each keyword. It’s clearer and you can pick up the patterns faster. Of course, if the site is huge and there are thousands of visitors, only then it is relevant to look at the percentage of visits.

16. Content



Above is a report of the top 10 titles that were most responsible for driving pageviews in August 2007. I can also see the time spent on page, bounce rate and % exit. I’m glad to see some 3-4 minutes average along with one 6 minute average. It shows how well that particular article has done. Overall, I’m happy with the attractiveness of my site.

Ask anyone what they expect from their own website and their response would be to attract visitors. Of course it doesn’t come easy. A lot of time and effort is needed to shape and deliver valuable information for the pleasure of others. Oh yeah and good content is defined by :

• Uniqueness
• Structure of point delivery
• Quality of grammar, punctuation and spelling
• Readability

The idea is to keep a balance between what the readers want, what the search engines think they need and what they really need.

Have fun!

PHP is a server side programming language designed to produce amazing dynamic web pages which :

• allows you to create dynamic html pages and files.
• can be used to authenticate logins to a site
• allows web owners to redirect pages
• keep counters
• allows you to personalize pages. For example, if I login to a site using my username and password, the PHP codes will then tell the server to generate a personal note that says ‘Welcome, Chris!’. So if another person logs in, the server will generate another personal page that says ‘Welcome, (username)!’.
• If you set up your own server you can use also PHP to allow people to download files from a certain folder and then log the ip address of the person that downloaded it. As long as the page saves or changes a file on the server, PHP will most likely be used.

There are plenty of PHP training courses out there that helps people to learn even faster. Open Technology Group is one fine example that provides the highest quality training at an affordable prices that includes post meet ups after classes. Their courses are taught by Zend certified PHP MySQL training instructors with over decade’s experience.

At the moment, they conduct classes on a monthly basis. The classes are carried out for a period of 5 days. If you live in the US and some other parts of Canada, airfare to North Carolina, accommodation, shuttle services and course materials are all included with the fee you pay.

Interested people are encouraged to submit a simple form or call them to ask about enrollment questions. They will even wire in a technical instructor to take calls, if needed. I believe that they have special pricing for government or educational bodies.

* sponsored review *

PHP MySQL Training
PHP training solutions

For those who aren’t so sure, you might ask, what is adsense?

AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. Website owners enroll in this program to enable text and image advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis based on website content. Though it’s pretty amazing how certain people can earn 4 figure income in a day through adsense, there are 2 BIG issues that come with it.

Click Fraud

If you are hated by certain groups for something controversial that you’ve said, you’re dead. There are certain groups of people out there who pick out websites that they disagree with and destroy the webmaster’s adsense income. All that has to be done is to click on the ads multiple times, say for example 100 clicks per person. A group of 3 is already enough to get your site’s adsense suspended.

Tracking Visitor Clicks

Of course it’s all great when you get clicks, at first. As time goes on, you’d want to improve the content and layout of your site. However, you can’t see who clicked what, where that visitor came from, how many clicks that particular visitor makes, or even which advertisement he clicked on. The only thing that you and I can do in the adsense dashboard is to see the clickthrough rate and how much you’ve earned.

However, the world of adsense publishing became a better place thanks to Trevor Fitzgerald, a 20-year-old student studying Business Administration at Michigan State University, who developed this amazing nifty tool called the ‘Adlogger‘. However, you gotta be able to use FTP to upload the folder to your website.

Guys, if you’re an adsense / YPN freak, you’re gonna love the 16 benefits that come with using the super cool, free, open source, amazing Adlogger.

1. Track and log when a visitor clicks on one of your AdSense ads
2. Optionally receive an email after every reported click
3. Receive an email after every reported multiple click
4. Secure administrative backend
5. Know the total number of clicks and the total number of unique visitors that clicked
6. Know the IP address, hostname, user agent, browser information, operating system of the visitor who clicked on the ad
7. Determine which advertisment was clicked
8. Get past click performance for a specific date or range of dates
9. Find your best performing pages
10. Custom channels help you monitor which pages are receiving clicks
11. Block ads for a specific IP address or range of IPs
12. Automatically block ads for visitors who are clicking too many within a certain time period
13. Know exactly when, why, and for whom ads were successfully blocked
14. If AdSense ads are blocked, you can display an alternate advertisement
15. Code generator page to make installation and setup easySynchronize all of the reporting to Google AdSense server time

You gotta start using it, man. Actually, everyone should. =)

Adlogger
Prevent click fraud & track clicks

According to WhiteHat Security’s statistics, there is a 20% likelihood that 8 out of 10 websites have a vulnerability in the area of SQL Injections.

Keeping It Clean

For example, it is important to make sure that users insert only codes that have these characters in the email field :

• abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
  0123456789
  @.-_+

Quotes Quotes Quotes

Many database interface languages caters to the need of safe-quoting text. For example, MySQL uses 2 functions to ‘string quote’ and to ‘string parse’ :

• mysql_real_escape_string() adds backslashes in front of all the quotation marks.
• stripslashes() removes backslashes in front of the quotation marks.

Bounding Parameters

• Insecure

Statement s = connection.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = s.executeQuery(“SELECT email FROM member WHERE name = ” + formField); // *boom*

• Secure

PreparedStatement ps = connection.prepareStatement(“SELECT email FROM member WHERE name = ?”);
ps.setString(1, formField);
ResultSet rs = ps.executeQuery();

Above is an example of bound parameters in Java. Neither quotes, semicolons, backslashes nor SQL comment notations are able to corrupt the string because it’s been turned into data. Bounding parameters is one of the most important step anyone can take to truly secure the database from injection attacks.

Rights Management

Web applications should use connections to the database with as little rights as possible. Web applications should start with only 1 type of access which is query access to members table. This method eliminates the possibility of using the ‘UPDATE’ statement to taint the database. Let rights access be progressive, like allowing more flexibility only after a successful user validation.

Making Use Of Stored Procedures

As long as the interface on the stored procedure stays the same, the table structure can change with no consequence to the application that is using the database. This layer of abstraction is like an extra barrier because table permission is implicitly set. By only allowing database modifications through stored procedures, tables are safe from exposure to external applications.

Separating TRUSTED and UNTRUSTED networks

A DMZ is a computer network that is accessible from two other computer networks that have no direct contact with each other. Often, one of these networks is the Internet and the other is a local, internal network. Having a web server with very, very little access in a DMZ prevents total control of all networks, even if one manages to take full control of the machine.

SQL Injection Attacks
Useful tips on SQL injection attacks

• find interesting directories and files on the web site
• look for sample scripts that can be abused
• find known vulnerabilities in the web server implementation itself

So I tested it out in rangit.com and found around 30 light vulnerabilities. I was a bit shocked to find such a list. Really. There were a few requests that hackers can use to execute SQL Injections. Scary but REAL. Remember, with this tool you can scan any website for their vulnerabilities. Here’s a screenshot of mine.

To use Wikto you need to get 2 other things.

1. WinHTTrack
2. HTTprint

After successfully installing all 3 softwares, go to Wikto’s ‘SystemConfig’ tab. There are 4 important things to configure for Wikto to work.

HTTrack

Locate the HTTrack folder and point to the file ‘httrack.exe’ in your program files.

Cache

Create a new folder for storing data. I created one in C: and named it ‘Temp’. After creating, point to it.

HTTPrint

Locate HTTPrint folder and point to the file called ‘win32′.

NiktoDB

Click on the button and download the latest database for scanning. This is essential for first timers.

After that, go to the ‘Wikto’ tab and enter a website. Click ‘Start Wikto’. Basic tests commands will be carried out from NiktoDB. Watch the scanned vulnerabilities appear one by one.

The solution would be to talk to your web host about the scan results. Show what you’ve found and and see what your web host says.

Sensepost Wikto
Web server assessment tool

Web Hosting Bandwidth
What bandwidth is all about

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us
Awesome and frightening at the same time

To show appreciation to visitors

Daily, I write around 4 posts in 3 blogs. A health blog, a motivational blog and a technology blog. Each of them are in a category of their own and have different sets of users. With MyBlogLog, I can appreciate my readers, new and returning, by showcasing their presence. This allows each reader a chance of being clicked into and checked out by other visitors. I find this very important and have located the MyBlogLog display as the second widget at the top. As the saying goes, ‘encouraged people achieve the best, dominated people achieve second best, neglected people achieve the least’.

To build a solid community



MyBlogLog empowers authors and readers to run at the same level. Everyone who reads my site can learn about and engage with one another, and in the process take the conversation to a whole new level. Readers can become friends with other people who read my favorite blogs. Readers will see what else they’re reading. If you wanna know someone deeper, you can check out their MySpace and Friendster profiles or even view their Flickr photostreams.

To get writing ideas when hitting writer’s block

There are times when I run out of ideas to write. Everyone experiences writer’s block once in a while. However, there are a million things to write about out there. The solution lies in knowing where to go. That is where my community of MyBlogLog comes in. By checking out other readers’ choice of blogs helps to generate ideas. You know, like for example, I came across 2 blogs writing about 10 or 9 reasons to use MyBlogLog and felt something missing. I didn’t feel ‘the kick’ reading it. So thanks to my readers, I have now filled in the blanks and completed the missing points by producing this brilliant post. =)

To motivate yourself

Every author has low days. Days where you hit rock bottom in terms of spirit and strength. I feel demoted and low when I get less than usual in terms of Adsense. Or when there had not been any prominent reviewing opportunities for the day. However, the picture of the people displayed in MyBlogLog tells me that I have people who read my site. A community waiting for the next interesting post from me. And that itself is motivating. Everytime I visit my own blog, I feel both excited and responsible for myself to get back on track.

To keep track of stats



I have 3 tracking codes embedded in rangit.com. Google Analytics, OneStat and MyBlogLog. Google Analytics is the best. However, Google Analytics is a bit more complicated than the rest with all the features and reports. Onestat is simple and easy to use. However the reports are not detailed enough for me to analyze and improve. MyBlogLog on the other hand is cool! The lock on displaying yesterday’s data in the free edition is good! It keeps users from being distracted to keep on checking the results. MyBlogLog has 3 of the most useful data displayed in the dashboard. I get to see the full URL of :

• Where readers came from
• What readers viewed
• What readers clicked

To show that you are of the same wave with the author

As a reader of other blogs, I leave a footprint behind when I visit. The footprint in MyBlogLog will show my personality when authors view me out. MyBlogLog will display my blogs and communities for the world to see, so as a reader I get to show my favourites and authors of the community will get a chance to know me. It allows forming of ideas and opinions on me. Imagine a geek meeting a geek. Or a joker meeting another joker. It connects people. Isn’t it cool?

To attract readers with your avatar picture



Yeah. Attract clicks. Put up an interesting picture. It can be anything. I’ve a reader who has the Chinese God of Wealth as his avatar! It would attract a whole load of God of Wealth devotees. Or if you think you are a cool dude or a hot chick, put up your best picture. This will help strengthen your community and increase readership. As the saying goes, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’.

To increase your chances of knowing people who can promote you

Wouldn’t you be surprised if someday someone BIG visited your blog? Like for example, if you see John Chow‘s avatar in your MyBlogLog community wouldn’t you get excited? A BIG person’s presence does make a load of difference. It protrudes a sense quality which helps a lot in convincing readers to stick around. If you wrote something that catches the eye of the BIG visitor, who knows, you might get mentioned about something of high value that you wrote. Then, you’ll have to thank me in the comments. =P

MyBlogLog Community
Begin to build bridges

Part of what I learned was on where to get free, open, copyleft images. Surely I wouldn’t want to land any party in any legal tangle. I found many, many useful image repositories during the 6 months on the project and it has widen my knowledge. Here are 9 of the most reliable sites to get re-usable, high quality, free images for your website, blog, adverts, banners, etc.

PicSearch



One of the most accurate and fresh image search on the web that indexes over 1,700,000,000 pictures! Picsearch connects its users to the vast visual resources of the internet by using its own technology to crawl the web and create a searchable index of images. When a user sends a query to Picsearch the returned result is received as a set of thumbnail images that are sorted to ensure that they are as highly relevant as possible. When the user clicks on a thumbnail they are linked to the original web site where that image is located.

Parents, relax, because Picsearch is family friendly so children are able to surf in safety as all offensive material is filtered out. The site is also very user friendly as it’s designed to be simple, fast and accurate. Good stuff!

Woophy



Woophy stands for World Of Photography. The website is founded by a Dutch collective of photo aficionados and internet designers who believed that navigation on internet can be more visual, logical and associative.

With the help of (amateur) photographers across the world their objective is to ultimately cover every inch of our world map with images that represent the world’s beauty and peculiarity from all different cultural perspectives. You can search by city, country, category keywords or member to find photos. The categories are animals, culture, landmarks & buildings, objects and people. You can also limit the search results by date and sort by number of views. Thumbs up!

Free Stock Photos



Download images and use it for personal or commercial design projects as many as you want for FREE! There are some restrictions in using photos from the site such as retaining the domain name when you use the photo for your website or blog.

YotoPhoto



Originally an experiment to facilitate easier image searching of the Wikipedia, Yotophoto eventually expanded to index over 250, 000 free images. Yotophoto is a search engine for free-to-use stock photographs and images. These are images that are either in the Public Domain or released under generous Creative Commons, GNU FDL or similar licenses. Yotophoto’s goal is to help people locate, remix, republish open and copyleft images.

Stock Xchng



Stock.XCHNG was launched in February 2001, as an alternative for expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creative people could exchange their photos for inspiration or work. In about two years the site evolved into a massive community indexing over 1.000.000 registered users and more than 250.000 photos online!

The site encourages users to share photos with fellow designers! The aim is to keep SXC as a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to the public free of charge.

MSN Search Images



MSN, one of the top 5 search engines. The returned results are almost as good as Google’s or Yahoo’s. Just click the image to get its details like the source and the image availabilty. There is a written term saying that ‘MSN Search is not affiliated with the contents or authors of the page displayed below. We are not responsible for its content. The image may be subject to copyright laws.’ So check the image’s page to find out if it’s copyrighted or not before using it.

Yahoo! Images



It’s good! No doubt about it! However, images appearing in the results may or may not be copyrighted. What you can do is, if you find a picture that you want to use, review the site and contact the owners to find out about using it. Yahoo! Image also lists popular image searches by web surfers so you can check out the top search by everyone.

Google Images



Relax, and be happy for this is the mother of all image searches. You will MOST likely find the image you are looking for, here. There’s a lot that you can do besides keying in the keyword and press ‘search’. You can also limit images to a specific size, a specific format or even colors! Once you find a picture, check the site or contact the site’s owner to find out about using it.

Again, the important thing to understand in using this search is that the images come from all over the Web and there’s no guarantee they’re free. What I usually do is just send a mail and offer a backlink as ‘appreciation’ for using the images. I have had 100% approval rate using this method as every website appreciates backlinks that boosts their search engine rankings. Everybody is happy that way. =)

Flickr



Flickr’s 2 main goals:

• To help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
• To enable new ways of organizing photos.

Flickr has tons of features, very easy to use and a community of world contributors. This is definitely the BEST and COOLEST online photo repository in the world. I could spend an hour doing nothing but checking out the ‘last 7 days‘ section. What’s even cooler? Flickr lets you search for only Creative Commons-licensed images in the advanced search tool to save users the trouble of having to sift through thousands of images to find the ones free for re-use. Brilliant work by the Flickr team!

Other Image Repositories
List of small to large directories