Optimizing Online Website Profile

Have you ever heard of Web Analytics? Do you know what can you get from it? How popular you are in the web? Where are your visitors coming from?

Web Analytics is one of the Internet Marketing strategies. In web analytics, you should be able to see the traffic coming in and out of your website. What, where and how they get to your website. How long your visitors stayed or browsed your website. How long they stayed on one page. You should know their geographical location. Your website’s compatibility to most browsers. These data would help you optimize your website and strategize on future content.

Google, the largest company in the internet is offering a free service for web analysis, Google Analytics. Google Analytics (GA) can provide you your website’s on-line web analysis. GA provides statistical data that may be greatly used for marketing. It analyzes your visitors, traffic sources, page views, content, keywords and your goals. Here are some tips and tricks for optimizing a website:

Visitors and visits

Unique visitors represent the number of unduplicated visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. Visits are the total number of total times visitors accessed your site.

There is marketing value in looking at your visitors as a way to gauge what share on your market is interacting with your site. Measuring visits helps determine how valuable your site is to that online market.

Trended over time, goals for increasing visits can be set depending on the campaigns you are initializing to drive visitors to your site or provide value so they return to your site.

Page views

A page view was defined as a request made to the web server for a page, as opposed to a graphic, while a visit was defined as a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that expired after a certain amount of inactivity, usually 30 minutes. The page views and visits are still commonly displayed metrics, but are now considered rather unsophisticated measurements. via

Bounce Rate and Usability

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your site and leave after viewing only one page. This may be caused by misdirected search engine or poor use of pay-per-click ad campaigns. The worst cause of bouncing is poor usability, this is when people can’t find what they are looking for or believe your site can’t help them.

Top content

This indicates content that is particularly interesting to visitors. By knowing this the user will be able to know which part of the site should be improved or enhance the usability by making these pages easy to find. It would also show the topics or pages that are not that interesting or that is not easy to find.

Traffic sources

Direct traffic means these are the visitors who typed your URL in the address bar of a browser or book marked your site.

Referring traffic is visitors who click a link from another site that leads to your website.

Search engine results, these may be caused by keywords pertaining to a website’s content. Meta tags are html scripts that contain tags that are also equivalent to a website’s content; these may contain short descriptions of each page in a website which search engine robots gather.

Geographical Traffic Sources

This shows which city, state or country a website’s visitor is located. This could show your strength and gaps in the market. The visitors’ geolocation is obtained by information registered with the IP address; this is not 100% reliable due to technical constraints, but a good indicator where your traffic originates.

Keywords

These are phrases or random words that a user types in a search engine. All or some words should be included in one website and this website could be one in the results of a search.

To improve a keywords success, optimize the website’s pages for search engines. Each page should be rich in content, more words, more tags, more relation to each search. Create a metadata for each page, describe every media or embedded content (image, audio or video) because this file types are untraceable for some search engines. Grow referring links, find a way that there you website have links in other websites as this would give more weight to the website and making it appear nearer to the first result page.

Hospitals’ websites may seem like it doesn’t need web analytics but most of the people today do their research in the internet, if a user wants to know more about a disease he or she Googles it. And by optimizing a websites meta description and content there would be a large possibility that it would be the first result from a web search. If a hospital like Makati Medical Center would apply web analytics to their website, they could predict trends for what they should need for their business and the website itself in the future.

Radical Transparency

Last Saturday our class was divided into groups and each was given a topic to report about the book Radically Transparent:Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, written by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss. Our group covered Chapter 14, repairing your online reputation. We talked about how to handle an attack from your detractors, hiding it and how to prevent it from happening again.

Traditionally, our reputation is based on what we had achieved and experienced. Today, our reputation is based on what people say about us on the internet. Most of the people on the this internet era Googles our name or our company's name to know more about us, and most results come from blogs and social networking websites which may contain positive and negative information about us. We don't want negative information and gossips about us spread like fire so, we have to manage our online reputation, we have to be Radically Transparent.

Being radically transparent means having a good positive online reputation and being open to your stakeholders of what, when and how are your actions or decisions being done. Stakeholders are your costumers, readers or members that may give positive or negative insights about you or your company where your online reputation rely.

Based on the book, to be radically transparent you should learn to: (via)

• Navigate the new rules of engagement in a transparent world

• Define who you are and develop your personal or corporate brand

• Create positive PR buzz with your online content

• Gain visibility in web search results and harness SEO tools

• Understand the pros and cons of e-mail before you hit “send”

• Use the latest internet tracking methods and understand how information spreads online

• Apply solid strategies for online reputation repair when things go wrong

Navigate the new rules of engagement in a transparent world. By defining these new rules, your stakeholders will be able to see step by step the processes that are being taken therefore, there would be lesser possible complaints coming from them. In other instances, if the stakeholders see a possible mistake they can immediately say something about it and changes may be done as soon as possible. If the stakeholders voice out their opinions, the company should take the time to listen to their comments for they are their customers and if they disappoint a customer it is a possibility for them to lose a loyal stakeholder, which would lead to negative effect on the company.

Define who you are and develop your personal or corporate brand. When you define who you are or what your company does, you have to be straight to the point because it is one of the most important things in business. This way, your work can be segregated and put in the right label. A few examples would be if people are looking for fast food chicken they would immediately think of Kentuky Fried Chicken or if they are looking for toothpaste they would think of the brand Colgate. Your goal is for either you to be the household name or your company.

Create positive PR buzz with your online content. Your online content should always be updated. The advertisments that you give your products should have an effect to your stakeholders to ask for more. When you have a new product, your customers are excited to want to buy that product as soon as it comes out. The one thing that you have to make sure is that you do not create something that insults a competitor because that could cause a negative effect to you and to your customers. So, instead of gaining new stakeholders you increase the risk of losing them.

Gain visibility in web search results and harness SEO tools. If someone Googled you, your site should be at leat at the first three page results. Make a way that you appear there. Learn how to use proper tagging, meta tags and content tags. Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Tools. By doing this helps lessen search egines to categorize and classify your site. If it is among the first three page results then it would bring you more customers and therefore leads your company to more exposure. Submit your website to search egines, for example; Google, Yahoo or Bing, which in this case you wouldn’t have to wait for the search engine to come to you.

Understand the pros and cons of e-mail before you hit "send". You should double check your newsletters, announcements etc. because this may cause negative reactions. Try getting reactions from a smaller crowd before sending it to everybody. In that case, you lessen the risk for once again having fewer stakeholders because sending newsletters and announcements actually attracts more people now-a-days for the internet is common in our day to day lives.

Use the latest internet tracking methods and understand how information spreads online. Apply Google Analytics to your website. Find out more information about your online visitors; where are they from, how they found your site and what pages they looked at. In google analytics, you'll be able to trace how your visitors got to your site. From there you can improve your site and see its effect after every other update.

Apply solid strategies for online reputation repair when things go wrong. You should be able to repair your online reputation whenever it is being attack, you have to have strategies in how to cleaning up the mess. Know your facts, seek advice and estimate the damage. You should understand your detractors and respond to them legitimately. Use Google Alerts. Convert then to an evangelist, make friends with your enemies.

Healthcare and Data Mining

Data mining is the extraction of all data of a person may it be from previous, present and future data. This also helps predict future trends and behaviors from past events to make better knowledge-driven decisions which could help businesses to be more proactive. Data mining can help organize the clustered data and make it easier for experts to find all the information they need faster than before. There are two methods given in order to understand deeper the algorithms that are being used up to this day. These two methods are; classical techniques: statistics, neighborhoods and rules, and next generation techniques: tree networks and rules.

All of this basically means that with all the previous information given, they are all summarized and arranged by categories making data easier to be found. By this you are able to “discover hidden value in your data warehouse”. This industry has benefited many industries improve their business to browse and locate a large database to find the information that they need.
With data mining, the most commonly used techniques are artificial neural networks, decision trees, genetic algorithms, nearest neighborhood method and rule induction. All these technologies have been used for more than a decade but with only a small volume of data. But now, these capabilities are developing to incorporate with industry-standard data warehouse and OLAP platforms in order for them to store a higher volume of data.

In healthcare, data mining is a great way to be used. Given that they may have a new patient with cancer they can use data mining to gather all the information from previous patients that they have treated and gather the facts that can help their new patient. This is called the clustering technique. This is a possible way to determine which country contains a certain type of illness or which kind of illness affects a majority amount of people in a certain time or season. Data mining is a faster way for them to get that information and may be able to formulate a possible cure. If for example the hospital wants to know more details about how to treat cancer, you can have an answer for one way of treating the cancer but you then apply a new technique of treating the cancer and you do not know the outcome, that type of data mining is called modeling.

Hospitals in the United States of America use data mining tools to gather information from laboratories where the data mining tools have algorithms that tallies results which will be processed to be analytical values to show the trends of a spreading infection. Before, they manually track infections, but they saw the idea of having IT (Information Technology) integrated with their laboratories. These tools will save a lot of time for infection control professionals to detect the patterns of an infection increasing its number of victims. (via)

Some hospitals use data mining for optimization of patient flow. They implemented computerized bed management systems and electronic medical records, large databases are created that could support improved managerial and clinical decision making to improve patient access and quality of care. (via)

Although different hospitals use different data mining tools and different models of DBMS (Database Management System), but how their HIS (Hospital Information System) processes the data and information are highly similar.

In a business point of view, data mining will truly have an advantage in the future and be a success. Before, there may have been possible errors with the way they gather data or information but now with this new technology, people will be able to gather information and come back with less or maybe even zero errors. Market basket analysis is another example of data mining for business. A store may record which kinds of footwear are sold more, may it be shoes or slippers, a data mining system may be able to predict which ones prefer shoes or slippers. They can use this example to calculate the behavior of customers which then they are able to increase their sales, make discount plans, promotions and make a store design. Another possible example for data mining in business is that when stores call random people about a certain sale, the data mining technique may already predict ahead of time which people would most likely respond to that sale. Therefore, there may be more outcomes and more benefits to that company with the help of data mining technology.


Data mining is fast therefore it saves time and man power which shows how effective it will when it is applied to an industry. It will also return less errors because it's automated thus it shows its efficiency. Heavy algorithms can be applied for analysis. Years of computation can be done in months, months in days and days in seconds. It is an industry's surveillance, its memory, its calculator, it's a part of an industry's brain.

Overall, data mining will surely be a benefit to technology.

Healthy Information

Information Technology (or IT) is a term used as an industry but actually it is the use of scanners, computers and softwares as tools for managing information for companies and businesses around the world. Today, many large companies in different industries like education, banking, telecommunication and health care have IT Departments or the MIS (Management Information System). Information Technology is one of the top priorities in a company because it is responsible for processing information, protecting information, storing information, transferring information and retrieving information, access to the information through internet and intranet which all would make a company more productive and efficient.

Health care is defined as the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions. And to provide these services accurately, productively and efficiently, Information Technology could be applied.

Most of the medical hospitals and medical clinics have their own IT department to provide information management for the data that moves in and out of them. Information from the doctors, nurses, technicians, patients and maintenance personnel must be stored and be ready for retrieving and updating all the time. Basic information like name, address and contact numbers are very important details for medical hospitals and clinics. Some need information about patients' medical background; vices, drugs they have taken, previous diseases, blood type, family doctor, HMO and other medical details. And with the help of IT, these information may be processed easily. The hospital or clinic would not need to call each clinic branch or hospital of a certain patient just to get the approval they need before getting their slip to see the doctor. There would not be any long hours of waiting and the patient would be satisfied for how quickly his or her transaction went.

The average wait time for scheduling appointments for family and specialty practices is on the rise. Healthcare IT can provide the connectivity and access to information in real time, enabling timely scheduling of patient visits. IT can play a very specific role to automate processes and drive efficiency, and thereby "doing the right thing for the patient.

Before, patients would need to go back to the hospital in order for them to get the results of their MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans, CT (Computerized Axial Tomography) scans and X-ray. Since IT is highly used all over the world, these scans may be sent to the patient through email with the doctor's note attached. This way, there would be less of an inconvenience for both patient and doctor.

Websites of medical hospitals and clinics, can make it easier for everybody to view which doctor they would like to see, may it be an gynecologist, a neurologist, a general physician or a cardiologist. It would provide each and every doctor's clinic hours and general background to be posted and there would be a part of the website where you may be able log-in and reserve the time you want your appointment to be with your chosen doctor. This way the patient can assure himself or herself that they have gotten the right doctor for them and they would not have any regrets. This would truly benefit them on their day to day lives, when they are not capable to going to the hospital to reserve a schedule because they do not have the time.

There are also three legislators looking for a nationwide demonstration project that would use information technology to gather data about how to care for cancer. This project was implemented so that Community Oncology Alliance (COA) may gather oncologists from all over the world to ensure quality cancer care that would also controls costs. Information technology would be able to provide the proper research that they need inorder to accomplish this project.

There is a system that healthcare IT has, they have online diagnostics and statistics about which kind of sickness is more inherited. For example, the flu, colds, rashes, numbness, sore eyes or any kind of sickness. There would be links with regular questions that patients would normally ask when they have to flu, like, "how often do you have to drink biogesic when you have the flu?" will be forgotten and instead of having to ask the doctor personally at the hospital the website would provide that answer. This system is called an Expert System. A medical expert system is co-developed by doctors and software engineers.

Information Technology helps the health care industry in giving faster and efficient quality services for their clients but they should not always be relying to the technology because unlike physical materials like forms and reports on paper, these are not always available. Technical problems may happen, the database may crash, servers are down, no electricity, in short there is no access to the information stored to their databases. They should keep it old school, or in Filipino "Yung dating gawi." They should still keep their information physically, having printed forms and reports that are in folders and arranged in a filing cabinet so that those problems may occur there will always be a backup and it would not cause a panic for everybody. But overall, information technology has truly changed healthcare and will continue to achieve improvements as the years progress.

References:
http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/careersintechnology/p/ITDefinition.htm
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/it-can-relieve-bottlenecks-physicians
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/it-based-demo-project-focus-cancer-care

Ako Migsmo

Hi! I'm Conrado Miguel Ambrosio from Laguna, Philippines originally from Diliman, Quezon City. I've been annoying my parents, Joseph and Frieda Ambrosio since the 18th of September, 1986. Now, my three siblings, Pat, Abby and Ponch hates me too. LOL

I love print and web design and I make some too. You can visit my tumblelogs: Miguel Ambrosio's Tumblelog, Domo nom nom and Retrato to see my works. I'm also interested in music, photography and Volkswagens. Someday I hope to be able to create my own short film.

This blog had been empty for two years and now I'll be updating it for my Data Mining Class in De La Salle Canlubang.