Gateway to the EU

Ten million visits per month. Two hundred official Web sites. These are the numbers that put EUROPA among the world’s biggest and busiest Web portals. It also provides a unique opportunity for the European Commission to continuously improve contact with the public — provided, of course, that detailed feedback on visitor behavior is available in a timely manner.

One of the biggest portals, and still growing
Given its increasing success, the Internet has become a key communication tool for the European Union (EU). EUROPA, the gateway leading to the Web sites of the European Commission (EC) and other European institutions, accounts for more than 10 million visits each month. It consists of about 200 main sites and involves more than 200 publishing teams. Every month, almost 100 million e-pages produced by the European Union are read in 20 languages. Final figures for 2004 exceeded 1 billion pages. Considering these figures, EUROPA is among the world’s biggest and most frequently consulted Internet portals. With the addition of new EU member states, even these impressive figures are certain to grow over the upcoming years.

"Ten million visits represents only 2 percent of all EU citizens," explains Louis Georges, project coordinator for the EU Internet portal. "The growth rate over the last few years has been around 30 percent. This is an unprecedented opportunity for Europe to better meet the demand for information emanating from public bodies, citizens and businesses."

Managing such a site is a daunting process, and the need for a powerful software solution to process and analyze all the activity — and keep the site functioning seamlessly — became a priority for EU officials when they realized the existing system wasn’t up to the task.

Analyzing visitor behavior
To achieve their communication goals, EU officials need to know how the Internet medium reaches its targeted audience. "Both information and communication must be considered as a classic commodity; that is to say, they are subject to the law of supply and demand. Because the EC is responsible for the portal, the organization has to appraise its return on investment for every Web site housed by EUROPA. This means adjusting sites as necessary, the same way a well-run business handles changing demands. And it requires a complete knowledge of the site and audience — including the number of visitors, most popular URLs, visitor behavior, efficiency of IT infrastructure, and so on.

However, compared to traditional methods, e-communication is much more complicated to assess. And the volume of data to be analyzed by EUROPA is among the largest in the e-world. Add to that the fact that the previous system was not able to support such a load and it becomes obvious why the EC decided to find a more satisfactory solution.

True partnership for autonomous solution
The requirements for the new system were demanding. Besides the capability of processing a huge amount of diverse data, the solution had to be able to work more precisely and much faster than its predecessor. The EC insisted on having all reports available within 24 hours — a new requirement. Moreover, the new application had to work with the Web sites’ existing applications for filtering and comparisons, central and local manipulations, global and detailed reports, among others. Furthermore, the EC was expecting a true support service from its supplier. At the end of the adjudication procedure, the EC signed a contract with SAS.

"SAS’ proposal conformed to all our requirements," declares Georges, the project coordinator. "It furnishes 45 reports every day for each of our 200 Web sites. What’s more, the reports are accessible as early as the next day, which is a great achievement." SAS also offers valuable technical assistance and the flexibility of their solution is particularly appreciated.

Daily reporting
The new reporting solution provides feedback on such essential parameters as the number of visitors, the most viewed pages, the selected paths, and the moment when visitors leave the site. Reports cover all the Web sites accessible from EUROPA. They are available in either a standardized format or based on user queries. They are selected by area of activity, category and time span. All reports are accessible to offices across the EU through a simple browser. Moreover, the reports can be exported to other IT applications for further analysis. Today, the process provides 15,000 accurate and up-to-date reports each week. SAS transforms up to 15 gigabytes of daily Web log files into useful information.

From a technical point of view, the EC’s new application is a central, self-running system. Input data is stored in proxy Web logs before it is processed. An extraction process loads the Web mart once a day. Reports on all the EUROPA Web sites and subsites are available within 12 to 18 hours. After analysis, the data is published on a dedicated Web server. Reports are then stored in a specific directory for every site owned by the various Web masters.

Increased efficiency
With the analyses SAS generates, Web masters know whether their site contains what visitors are expecting. Based on the observed behavior of the audience, they can adapt the navigation schemes, eliminate unpopular pages, or even correct broken links. These insights keep EC Web masters informed about the reasons for success or failure. This valuable feedback helps IT managers within the EC plan the necessary telecom and hosting equipment and scale it properly.

The result greatly enhances the quality of daily reports, allowing the EU to better monitor its e-communications. According to Georges: "SAS has helped us reach our goal of offering the most appropriate service to each of our visitors, whatever URL they are consulting. The navigation indicators help the European Commission to manage its resources much more efficiently and obtain the desired results. Now, we are perfectly positioned to meet the information demand."

Smooth project implementation
The project is the result of a close collaboration that began in July 2003. "From the beginning, our partnership with SAS worked smoothly and achieved consistently excellent results," explains Georges. "The relationship has always benefited from good communication and mutual confidence. SAS drew up a list of all the elements they needed to prepare the job properly. We knew exactly what was expected from us. Thus, we were able to hand SAS the precise data they needed. This included such things as configuration, memory features, and deadlines. This was a tough job, and involved an elaborate analysis of the EC’s current and future needs." The three-month development period was carefully and fully exploited by SAS to complete analyzes, fine-tune, and test the software before the migration. All this groundwork led to the creation of the secure and automated reporting application based on a central, self-running server.

Responsive and flexible
In spite of all the careful planning, after two weeks of processing, the system presented a memory shortage due to the gigantic volume of information it had to handle. SAS technical experts intervened immediately.

"For a few days, SAS specialists worked on the redefinition of a long-lasting solution. They put their time and knowledge at our disposal and offered to replace the 32-bit application with a 64-bit one. Such reactivity and flexibility is not only greatly appreciated, it is indispensable. They proved their capacity to face a problem and solve it efficiently," Georges reports. "Today the software is totally reliable. And we have already started work on new developments."

Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved.