Báo cáo thực tập FTU. Đây là báo cáo giữa khóa khoa Kinh tế quốc tế về Dự báo lượng truy cập website của công ty POH và các gợi ý cải thiện lượng truy cập. Phương pháp được dùng trong báo cáo là dự báo chuỗi thời gian
FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS -*** MID-TERM INTERNSHIP REPORT Major: International Economics Forecasting website traffic of POH Viet Nam JSC and recommendation to improve website performance Name of the Student: Student ID: Class: Supervisor: Hanoi, August 2020 TABLE OF CONTENT ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ABBREVIATIONS ACF AR CTA DA DR EASY JSC MA MINs MODs PA PACF POH R&D UR SEO Autocorrelation Function Auto-Regressive model Call to action Domain authority Domain Rating Eat – Activity – Sleep – Your time Joint Stock Company Moving Average model Admins Moderators Page Authority Partial Autocorrelation Function POH Vietnam Joint Stock Company Research and Development URL Rating Search Engine Optimization LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the report Along with the change of the global economy and society, the business model is also changing, especially the methods of customer access The 21st century open the boom of technology and internet, the international market is at the most exciting period of history And the WEBSITE – a wonderful product of Internet access has been benefited companies all over the world by giving the opportunity to sell everything to anyone anywhere Website in particular ad online sale, in general, open the door for small and medium enterprises, and start-up companies which not have brand advantages, good location, huge capital,…In Vietnam, along with the development of digital marketing, the website is increasingly playing an important role in business Because of the above benefits, the competition in reaching customers from the website is increasingly fierce In order for the website to be on the first page of Google searches, the companies need to pour a lot of money to invest in content, design, running ads, human costs…All these efforts aim to attract the large traffic and brand popularity During my internship at POH Vietnam Joint Stock Company (POH) - a company that brought technology solutions into online education for moms and babies, I realized that developing a website at the company plays an important role Therefore, I choose an internship topic: “Forecasting website traffic of POH Viet Nam JSC and recommendation to improve website performance" 1.2 Objectives of the report My objective when conducting this report is to analyze POH’s website performance and forecast the traffic in the last months of 2020 Then, offering some solutions and recommendations to improve website performance by directly increases the traffic This would help promote the activities of the marketing and development department Another objective is to apply knowledge and skills learned at Foreign Trade University in practical data researching After completing this report, I could be more confident in collecting and studying data Along with that, I would improve both independent-work and team-work skills, reading, and collect information giving solutions from the acquired information 1.3 Object and scope of the report The main object of this study is POH’s website traffic value every month The major work is forecasting the traffic value in the last six months of 2020 This report focuses on the traffic value of POH JSC only The data set includes 61 observations from June 2015 to June 2020 Besides, the report will mention some characteristics of marketing activities in that company, especially in content writing and digital marketing activities 1.4 Structure of the report Apart from the table of content, abbreviations, list of figure and table, conclusion, and references, this report gets five main chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Theoretical framework and methodology Chapter 3: Introduction of POH company and its website Chapter 4: Model of forecasting POH's website traffic and data description Chapter 5: Results and recommendation Due to limited knowledge and a short time internship, the report may not be very insightful and reflect all aspects of the problems There might be certain limitations and errors in the report I am looking forward to receiving positive comments from teachers, friends, and interested professors so that the report can be improved I would like to express my sincere admiration to the teachers of Foreign Trade University, especially MA Pham Xuan Truong, who has enthusiastically dedicated and guided me during my internship to complete this topic I also would like to thank the Board of Directors of POH Viet Nam Joint Stock Company, the marketing department, the website development manager for supportive help and guidance so that I could complete my internship perfectly CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY 2.1 Definition, purpose, and classification of forecasting technique 2.1.1 Definition Forecasting is an important technique in many fields, especially business and finance Through the developmental process of this technique, there are many different opinions to explain forecasting According to Jordan French (2017), forecasting is the process of making predictions of the future based on past and present data and most commonly by analysis of trends Usually, the estimation of some variable of interest at some specified periods in the future is considered forecasting Data is the key factor in forecasting Data may be up to date to get the accurate forecasting result A very new opinion updated in Investopedia website says that "Forecasting is a technique that uses historical data as inputs to make informed estimates that are predictive in determining the direction of future trends Businesses utilize forecasting to determine how to allocate their budgets or plan for anticipated expenses for upcoming periods This is typically based on the projected demand for the goods and services offered" (Alicia Tuovila, 2019) According to Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen and her colleges (2009), forecasting is a science and the art of predicting things that will happen in the future, based on scientific analysis of the data collected In general, forecasting is the technique to predict what will happen in the future based on analyzing historical data Forecasting is an indispensable need of all economic, financial, social, scientific, and technical activities 2.1.2 Purpose Accuracy forecasting creates comparative advantages: Forecasting is used to consider the future levels of the problem Basing on that, the business administrators will be proactive in making plans and decisions necessary for the process of production, investment, promotion, production scale, and financial supplies Forecasting helps reduce risk for the companies in particular and the total economy in general Thanks to forecasting, the policymakers can build up economic development and social policies in the entire national economy Then, economic development plans and programs have been scientifically established which brought about high economic efficiency Regular and timely forecasts help business executives take measures to adjust the economic activities of their units to obtain the highest production and business capability To sum up, forecasting is a compulsory activity in business This technique is promptly important in Sale and Marketing, R&D, Accounting – Finance departments 2.1.3 Classification The forecasting technique is divided into groups: qualitative and quantitative methods Qualitative methods apply to the situation that past data are not available This method bases on the opinion and judgment of consumers and experts The qualitative forecasting method is usually used for intermediate or long-range decisions Quantitative methods forecast future value as a function of past data It is applied when past numerical data is available and when it is reasonable to assume that some of the patterns in the data are expected to continue in the future This method is usually used in short of intermediate-range decisions Another category of forecasting methods depends on forecast types Depending on this way, forecasting methods will be basically divided into short-term forecasting, intermediate forecasting, and long-term forecasting methods 2.2 Some common forecasting methods With the small amount of observation and limited knowledge, we can forecast by some methods as: • Naive forecasting This is a cost-effective method It is used for time series only The rule of this method is quite simple: Forecasts are produced to equal the last observed value However, it’s worth to be used in economic and financial time series because these data often have patterns that are hard to predict reliably If time-series data has a seasonal factor, the seasonal naïve approach may be appropriate • Moving average method Moving average is a method in statistics used to analyze data points by creating a series of averages of different subsets of the data set The main idea of this method is that the first element of the moving average is calculated by the average of the initial fixed set of observations Then the fixed set will be moved forward With this method, some first and last numbers of the series will miss the corresponding average value This method is used with time series data to smooth short-term fluctuations and highlight longer-term trends or cycles For example, this method applies in technical data analysis of financial data such as stock prices, profits, or trading volume Some macroeconomic time series are also forecasted by this method • Exponential smoothing method (Single and Double, Holt’s, Winter’s) Exponential smoothing is a technique for smoothing time series data by the exponential window function This method is used to transfer exponentially decreasing weights over time The exponential smoothing method is used to analyze time-series data 10 This method is applied to smooth data in signal processing, acting as a low-pass filter to eliminate high-frequency noise • Data series analytical method The analytical method is a forecasting method lying on the basis of the analysis of time series factors This method mainly operates with short-term forecasting And as for time series, it is a sequence of well-defined data points measured at consistent time points over a period When using this method, we have to separate the seasonal component from the time series By removing seasonality component from the data, the cycle factor and irregular component impacts would not be significant to the model In particular time series analysis, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) is a model used frequently in statistics and econometrics This model is fitted to time series data either to study the data better or to forecast This model is applied in some cases where data show evidence that is not fixed, in which the initial differential step can be applied one or more times to eliminate nonfixed status The differencing in statistics is a transformation applied to time-series data in order to make it stationary ARIMA model usually use to forecast seasonal time-series data • Forecasting by VAR model VAR model (Vector autoregression) is a stochastic process model used to capture the linear interdependencies in multiple time series VAR models generalize the univariate spontaneous model (AR model) by allowing more than one development variable VAR model provides a non-theoretical approach to estimating economic relationships, thus an alternative to the “staggering identification constraints” in model structure (Sims and Christopher, 1980) This model is also increasingly used in some areas such as health research or sensor data The choice of forecasting method usually depends on some factors: 40 related to the field of pregnancy, parenting… they will easily be referred to the POH website Campaigns to run Google advertisement should only take place in the short term because running ads on Google is quite expensive Moreover, after having an awareness with a certain number of customers, the website will keep a steady traffic volume In particular, POH can take competitive advantage of first mover and word of mouth marketing from customers Pregnancies and mothers will pass on reputable websites with useful information • One more solution to help push POH's credibility is to appear in major newspapers and review pages This is an expensive but highly effective way of Marketing POH has no plans for this at the moment, but in my opinion, this is a worthwhile solution to try • Actively share and interact on major social networking sites such as Facebook Currently, POH’s fan-page has nearly 100,000 followers Articles that are shared from the website to the fan-page usually have good interactions on Facebook will be quickly re-shared exponentially and bring a large amount of traffic to certain articles on the web If the article on the website is really useful, the share from the reader will be an extremely effective advertising channel 5.3.2 Long-run solutions • Change web interface In my opinion, the POH website interface can still be improved to be more eyecatching This is a pretty sensitive solution as the customer may be familiar with the POH interface However, improving the website to become more eye-catching and more convenient for readers is necessary Deploying the concept, design, and implementation will take time, we have to research the target audience and a lot of testing before coming up with the best interface So this is a long-term task 41 • Enhance favorable and improve website limitations One of the factors that helps keep customers on the website is the user experience This is a fairly complex concept, but one component contributing to customer experience that we can emphasize is page loading speed 90% of users accessing the web are using mobile phones So the solution is to reduce the page loading speed so that the user waiting time is minimized This is what POH is doing quite well, but POH could better by reducing the images size and website effects Checking page loading speed and fixing errors is a long-term and frequent task • Improve content quality This is one of the core activities that directly determines website performance Diversifying topics and ensuring article knowledge are two issues of constant concern In particular, the style of writing articles on POH website has its own characteristics because the target audience is mainly parents, so the expression should be really simple and clear but still familiar and gentle Writing also need to be interesting and able to make the reader feel comfortable • Recruitment and training employees This is the most important solution of POH Currently, the team of website administrators and content creators for the website still need more members This is because of the need to post large articles on the website POH needs to recruit new employees with expertise and good work attitude to be responsible for making website content At the same time, investing in training existing staffs will also have a positive impact on the quality of the website 42 Above are some solutions given to maintain good performance of the website as well as promote the website’s development The solutions are based on observations, research of the author during the internship and the suggestions of POH's Marketing team These solutions all ensure the optimism and meet the most essential needs of the company in the current period 43 CONCLUSION Through the report, we see the role of a good and high-quality website in business nowadays The author have analyzed the real-world performance of website POH – a pioneer in online education for of mother and baby field Besides, basing on traffic value data the author had forecasted traffic values in the last months of 2020 The forecast results show that the increasing trend of traffic values proves the website performance is getting better and better This result is also a good signal for the company's marketing activities This will be the basis for the Marketing Department to set out goals and orientations for the upcoming activities Based on the prediction results and the analysis given, combined with the observed reality during the practice, the author has given the simple and most appropriate solutions to minimize the risks of fluctuations and a decrease in website traffic These solutions need to be taken seriously to get the best results Proper parenting in today's busy society is a matter of concern for everyone So the path for POH to grow is huge After more than years of operation, POH company has built its own brand name and owns a quality website that brings practical added value to customers Hoping that POH could take full of its advantages to become a successful and big startup in the future 44 REFERENCES ENGLISH REFERENCES: Aaker, D.A and Shansby, J G (1982) “Positioning Your Product” Business Horizons (25/3), pp.56-57 Alicia Touvila (2019) “Forecasting” [Online] Investopedia Available at : 10 11 12 https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/forecasting.asp#:~:text=Forecasting %20is%20a%20technique%20that,an%20upcoming%20period%20of %20time [Accessed 23 July 2020] Asteriou, Dimitros; Hall, Stephen G (2011) "ARIMA Models and the Box– Jenkins Methodology" Applied Econometrics (Second ed.) Palgrave MacMillan pp 265–286 Box, George E P., auteur “Time series analysis: forecasting and control” ISBN 1-118-67502-9 Chi-Jie Lu, Tian-Shyug Lee and Chia-Mei Lian (2012) “Sales forecasting for computer wholesalers: A comparison of multivariate adaptive regression splines and artificial neural networks” [Online] ScienceDirect 54 (1), pp 584-596 Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2012.08.006 Culotta, Aron; Ravi, Nirmal K.; Cutler, Jennifer (2015) “Predicting the Demographics of Twitter Users from Website Traffic Data”[PDF] Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence Available at: http://www.cs.iit.edu/~culotta/pubs/culotta15predicting.pdf [Accessed 18 August 2020] French, Jordan (2017) "The time traveller's CAPM" Investment Analysts Journal, 46 (2), pp 81–96 Gommans, M., Krishman, K.S & Scheffold, K.B (2001), “From brand loyalty to e-loyalty: A conceptual framework” Journal of Economics and Social Research, 3(1), pp 43-58 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f050/19a06648789f2b9e1a686febbaaed3b8af 0e.pdf?_ga=2.72395539.12675006.1597758777-966066017.1597758777 Huong, L (2007), “Web branding at vietnamese manufacturing enterprises”[PDF] PhD thesis, University of Fribourg, Switzerland Available at: Hyndman, R.J., & Athanasopoulos, G (2018) Forecasting: principles and practice, 2nd edition, OTexts: Melbourne, Australia OTexts.com/fpp2 [Accessed on 25 July 2020] Sims, Christopher (1980) "Macroeconomics and Reality" Econometrica 48 (1): 1–48 Trueman, B., Wong, M.H.F & Zhang, X (2001) “Back to Basics: Forecasting the Revenues of Internet Firms” Review of Accounting Studies 6, 305–329 45 VIETNAMESE REFERENCES: Le Thanh Ha, Giam Quang Do (2014) “Application of Exponential Smoothing Method for Forcasting Revenue of Vietnamese Steel Companies” [PDF] Science and Development Journal 12 (2), pp205-213 Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giam_Do/publication/262221974_Appli cation_of_Exponential_Smoothing_Method_for_Forcasting_Revenue_of_Vie tnamese_Steel_Companies/links/56840be108ae197583937722/Applicationof-Exponential-Smoothing-Method-for-Forcasting-Revenue-of-VietnameseSteel-Companies.pdf Nguyen Hong Quan, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (2019) “Su hai long doi voi cac website cua cac doanh nghiep ban le truc tuyen linh vuc dien tu: Nghien cuu tai thi truong Ha Noi” Economic and Development Journal 269 (11/2019), pp 32-41 Nguyen Ngoc Thiep (2010) “Mot so phuong phap khai pha du lieu quan he tai chinh va chung khoan (Mo hinh ARIMA)” [PDF] Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/minhnguyen89qb/m-hnh-arima [Accessed 25 July 2020] Nguyen Thanh Nhan (2015) “Tac dong cua chat luong website den cam nhan chat luong san pham va chat luong moi quan he voi khach hang” [PDF] The master thesis Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/trongthuy3/luan-van-chat-luong-webside-anhhuong-den-cam-nhan-chat-luong-san-pham [Accessed 25 July 2020] WEBSITE: Google Webmasters: https://www.google.com/webmasters PageSpeed Insights – Google Developers: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=vi POH website : https://poh.vn/ 46 APPENDIX Data of POH website traffic from June 2015 to June 2020 Year 2015M6 2015M7 2015M8 2015M9 2015M10 2015M11 2015M12 2016M1 2016M2 2016M3 2016M4 2016M5 2016M6 2016M7 2016M8 2016M9 2016M10 2016M11 2016M12 2017M1 2017M2 2017M3 2017M4 2017M5 2017M6 2017M7 2017M8 2017M9 2017M10 2017M11 2017M12 2018M1 2018M2 2018M3 2018M4 2018M5 POH’s website traffic 448 555 551 663 765 763 876 983 986 892 901 922 937 968 1007 1540 1901 5200 6190 5082 9820 12560 19220 14012 18265 20540 21553 22718 28857 53155 54488 59767 55938 53666 88145 177421 47 2018M6 2018M7 2018M8 2018M9 2018M10 2018M11 2018M12 2019M1 2019M2 2019M3 2019M4 2019M5 2019M6 2019M7 2019M8 2019M9 2019M10 2019M11 2019M12 2020M1 2020M2 2020M3 2020M4 2020M5 2020M6 196050 219563 394052 426059 459363 469151 534167 570065 592806 551419 653294 637249 648850 676698 720012 772638 729073 705254 738931 800570 891024 894874 925750 927365 938812 48 INTERNSHIP DIARY Name: Nguyen Thi Thuy Tien Student ID: 1714450039 Class: Anh 01 – CLC KTQT - K56 Major: International Economics Supervisor: MA Pham Xuan Truong Internship company: POH Viet Nam Joint Stock Company Company Address: Number 19A, lane 208A, Doi Can Stress, Ba Dinh, Ha Noi No Time 20/7/2020 – 25/7/2020 27/7/2020 – 1/8/2020 3/8/2020 – 8/8/2020 10/8/2020 – 15/8/2020 Internship tasks - Get familiar with the activities of the Marketing and Product Development Department - Work with the content creators and website development team - Translate foreign documents and researches - In charge of the content on Infants and Early Education - Work as a website Admin - Research the website visitor demographics through statistics and analyzing the collected indexes - Keyword research and find out trends for content related to the mother and baby field - Learn basic SEO skills - Track UR, DR, traffic with Ahrefs and Webmaster tools - Make a website development plan for August 2020 - Translate foreign documents and researches - In charge of the content on Infants and Early Education - Work as a website Admin - Learn more abou Content creation and basic SEO skills - Track UR, DR, traffic with Ahrefs and Webmaster tools - Make website performance report of July 2020 - Do statistics and analysis of user indexes on Youtube Studio Demographic research Make a plan to develop the company's Youtube channel - Translate foreign documents and researches - Track UR, DR, traffic with Ahrefs and Webmaster tools - Work as a website Admin - Support and collaboration with Product Development Department - Translate foreign documents and researches 49 CERTIFICATION OF ORGANIZATION ... developing a website at the company plays an important role Therefore, I choose an internship topic: ? ?Forecasting website traffic of POH Viet Nam JSC and recommendation to improve website performance" ... phucvu @poh. vn Website: poh. vn 3.1.2 Formation and development • Formation: POH Viet Nam Joint Stock Company was established in December, nd 2015 (Trading name is POH JSC and short name is POH) ... Therefore, to have a visual view of website performance in the last months of 2020, we will conduct a natural website traffic forecast to offer solutions to set goals, improve performance and overcome