Under-used Feature – % change over time
Comparing “now” to “then” is the possibly the most frequent kind of comparison in our business.
WebTrends makes it really easy to check changes and even calculates percent differences for you.
Have you ever really looked at all those calendar choices? The ones that show percentage change are the double calendar icons. There’s one for standard time periods (whole month, whole week) and another for non-standard comparisons (9 days of data, or 7 days but not a standard week).
Almost all WebTrends reports, including dashboards, will show you side-by-side numbers for your two time periods, with percentage change in a separate column. (The reports that don’t have to do with path analysis. There may be others I haven’t noticed.)
The main thing you have to remember when setting these up is that the percentages are Column A divided by Column B. The directionality is counterintuitive for some people. But if you get it wrong, you don’t have to start over. There’s a handy “transpose” button in the calendar bar that will switch positions immediately (below).
I use the comparison feature constantly, i.e. weekly, mostly checking for big changes for individual pages, individual entry pages, campaigns, and individual referrers. Big sudden changes are flags for further digging.
I also use it to get quick year-over-year stats. Very helpful.
It’s easy to compare month-over-month if you zoom out using the icon called “zoom out” (below). The calendar format changes from days in a month to all the months in a year, for example. (In the screen below, note that February is on the left, January on the right — to get, in the tables, percent change from January to February.)
Finally, a word about the Custom Calendar comparison (comparing non-standard date ranges). The custom calendar date selection process forces you to compare equal time periods. (Otherwise, the percentage changes won’t be meaningful, ya know.) So, if you change the calendar on the left from a 9 day period to a 5 day period, the calendar on the right will change automatically to a 5 day period. The start day stays the same, only the end date changes. That’s why, in the custom calendar interface shown below, the calendar on the right doesn’t have a way to change the end date.
Need we mention … when comparing custom date ranges, you’ll get more meaningful data if you make sure that both time periods start on the same day of the week, or at least include the same balance of weekdays. Otherwise, you may find you’re comparing a 9 day period containing two weekends to a 9 day period containing only one weekend. For most sites, this won’t give a true picture of the relative differences.
2 comments
A “handy” feature of automating a report comparing the last two months is that increases show as a negative %, and decreases are positive. I think it’s a mismatch between the way report comparisons do percentages (A/B, as you mention above), vs the way it displays the data.
Would someone please hit the “transpose” button?
Rocky and friends, this blog is like a set of little tutorials and I have been trying to do some every day or so for the last two weeks. It has been very very very helpful with results that for me exceed all the formal training I have had so far. If you really are outsiders then WebTrends should be paying you because, like another commenter on another of your items, I am now much happier with WebTrends than before and I can now see how it is superior to what I was using before this job.
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