Site Reference Internet Marketing Articles-21

Site Reference Internet Marketing Articles-21

Have you ever wondered how much information you reveal about yourself every time you visit a website? Do you REALLY know what that information says about you? You might be surprised!
When most people think of sending sites information, they think about the information they provide when they fill out a form or click something on the site. They think about the pages they land and exit on, the time they spend on each page, and the cookies sites leave on their computers. Sadly, this isn even a quarter of the information available and used by many site owners.
If you visit Panopticlick (Hat tip to Tim Nash!), a site geared toward online safety and privacy, will instantly read your browser and give you a list of all the information it can gather from your computer. If you give it a try, you see it can generate a massive, massive list.
Admittedly, as a user, this scares the ever-loving bejeebus out of me. As a website owner, and lover of personalizing websites and sales funnels, however, it like digital Christmas!
What Your Browser Reveals About You
Google Analytics and heat maps do wonders for revealing user habits and patterns, but even they aren near as useful or accurate as the information on your browser. Let look at the following sample:
That is a TON of information, even though I have tweaked this browser for security reasons. Also, I should mention that Panopticlick doesn reveal any specific information for safety reasons. However, even my browser fingerprint was identified as unique, when compared to almost 1.4 million other browsers.
Decoding the Data
So, what can you learn, just by looking at this data?
Browser Type Without even digging into the technical stuff, it pretty easy to pick out a few helpful, but simple facts. The type of browser someone uses is fantastic when coding and designing websites. However, it also a good indication of user habits and patterns.
For example, I using Rockmelt. This makes it easy to see that I a heavy Social Media user, otherwise I likely be using something with a lighter interface. It also hints that I have a Facebook and Twitter account; I actively share information, and am comfortable using Google and apps.
As a website owner, information like this gives me a good indication of whether I should be using social networks, which ones, and how to optimize my site for these sorts of activities, just to name a few. I haven even mentioned the importance of optimizing your site for the right browser!
Browser Plugin Details In that massive list of information, the site found evidence of plugins such as Adobe, Java, Shockwave Flash, Runtime Scripts, and many others along these lines. That means I actively using these platforms. Once you know this, you can optimize your site for these types of mediums to suit the largest audience possible.
It can tell I run Google Gears and Google Update, which is great information if you running online software like Remember the Milk, for example. Quicktime and iTunes means I likely watch videos and listen to music fairly frequently. iTunes also means I likely have an iPhone, iPod, or other iProduct. (You also notice a list of media files the browser can handle.)
Then, there the advantages to knowing I have things such as screen capture plugins, Silverlight, Windows Live, and several others. In fact, it even knows how many plugins I have, not to mention it also reveals that I run Mozilla products. Unfortunately, details about all of these plugins also means it much easier for hackers and others to identify weak spots in my browser security and which methods I most susceptible to.
Time Zone While this might seem pretty useless, it can be really helpful in identifying browsing habits/routines, location, when to publish content, cultural limitations/expectations, and much more.
Screen Size, Color Depth, System Fonts Again, great information for designing and optimizing your site. You can easily figure out what the most popular screen size is to get the best results (or what kinds of fonts an audience is most comfortable with). Also, it can be a good way to identify gamers and tech-savvy audiences.
Cookies How easy is it for you to track this audience segment and what methods can you use? This is a quick and easy way to tell.
Now, imagine how you could separate and funnel site visitors when you combine all this information? Add to it additional information you can pull from a visitor computer additional scripts, as well as the information they provide you through forms, site interaction and browsing patterns, and you have an amazing amount of power.
I pay very close attention to things like browsing habits when it comes to monitoring the user side of my site. I see where they come in from like via the PC or Mac as well as smart phones. I have checked my site on my own smart phone to see what it looks like. I also check to see what browsers they are actually using, so I know what ones to have installed on my PC in case I need to do a cross browser check for something.