Web Analytics Basics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data. Improve your marketing by leveraging web analytics by knowing what it is? and how it stands to influence your online business? Its main purpose is to understand and optimize web usage. Quantify values to your site and with free tools such as Google Analytics gain insightful and actionable information. Know how to set up the GA tracking code, customize business goals, and measure bounce rates, track acquisitions & so on. Find out which web pages convert well. It is a methodical study of trending online and offline patterns. It is done to analyze and optimize your site performance and web traffic. Customer behavior is the answer to optimize a website for conversion metrics. Track your audience by establishing a system of monitoring your websites. Evaluate user behavior and take action in areas where improvement is needed.
Read more by clicking on 7steps-to-getting-started-with-google-analytics.
Analytics Tools
Analytics tools, for example, determine answers to questions such as:-
- What number of clients visit?
- To what extent they stay?
- What number of pages do they visit?
- Which pages do they visit? and
- Whether they land by following a link or not?
Web Analytics is used to track key metrics. They look at key performance indicators. KPIs are responsible for conversion & buy.
Active Industry Analytic Areas
- Web Analytics
- Social Media Analytics
- Advertising Analytics
- E-commerce Analytics
- Audience Analytics
- App Analytics
- Big Data Analytics.
Why is Web Analytics important?
We need to have a yardstick to measure work done. In this web analytic tools has a role to play. Great user experience can be achieved through valuable insights and data that are provided by Web Analytics. The success rate of a website can be accessed by Web Analytics through:-
- identifying web content and segments that need to be corrected and improved
- find out important keywords and referral sources
- goals acquisition and continual monitoring of web traffic
Web Analytics show which pages of your website are more popular than others. The most popular pages likely results in purchasing. One can also accurately track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns. This enables to determine the future course of action.
How Web Analytics Work?
Web Analytics tools ‘tag’ their web pages. This is done by inserting JavaScript code into the web page. Through this ‘tag’, the analytics tool
- counts each time the page gets a visitor or a click on a link.
- uses cookies for tracking repeat visits and individual sessions
- collects information like device, browser and geographic locations.
Users tend to delete cookies. With different browser restrictions on the code, no analytics platform claims full accuracy of their data, Different analytics tools produce slightly varying results. Analysis and insights from such data are called Big Data Analytics.
Web Analytics Process
The process of web analytics are:-
- Setting business goals. The common examples are growing your subscription signups & growing online visitors. It can also be to grow traffic from social media and increase revenue from online sales. Get repeat customers, reduce costs per online visitors and increase visitors who interact with your blog post, etc
- Setting the KPIs to track the goal achievement
The tracking and review of key performance indicators (KPIs) gives a clear understanding of:-
- How your website is performing?
- Where your visitors are coming from?
- What are they doing upon visiting?
Common KPI’s
- Conversion rate KPI,
- Traffic sources KPI,
- Time spent on website KPI,
- Cost analysis KPI etc
With the right KPIs, web analytics data can aid to better understand your audience. This allows you to adjust your online presence. Attract more visitors and increase conversion rate.
Raw data collected must be correct & suitable. You may have data of total visitors to your website in a day. This data can be broken down. With a web analytics tool, you can analyze social media or other sources from where they come.
Based on the outcomes you can come to know whether advertising spends on each source is yielding the desired results.
Metrics —> Analytics —> Insights
To arrive at insights, analyze data. Metrics are quantitative measurements. They are collected before analytics can be performed. Analytics are mathematical models. They incorporate business conditions. Insights are what human concludes from analytics.
Test Alternatives
Based on assumptions learned from the data analysis, test alternatives. Web Analysts must figure out how to conduct a quick test and arrive at logical solutions.
Tips for website testing
- Test Alternatives based on assumptions learned from data analysis.
- Testing must be done across the website, not just the landing pages
- Use tools and your skills with a small project and then go big
- Measure multiple goals
- Try testing different segments – A/B Testing
- Based on either data analysis or website testing, implement insights.
Carefully consider all the above factors in order to make a meaningful decision on web analytics implementation.
Key Metrics
Key Metrics in web analytics that need to be measured are:-
- Audience – Page view, bounce rate, pages per session, demographic info, devices, etc
- Acquisition – sources of traffic such as yahoo, bing, google, direct, etc, organic traffic, social media traffic, referral traffic & direct traffic.
- Site Content – Landing pages and Site speed.
Once a list of measurable goals is ready, set the analytics goals by identifying the goal that is measurable. Traffic insight can be analyzed with the help of segmentation. Next, identify the business goal that relates to action, and apply segments to come up with actionable insight.
Web Analytics Basics – Data Sources
Sources of Data are through server logs, search engine statistics, visit data, conversion funnels, etc.
Server logs record movement on the server. They are IP address, date/time and page visits. It can provide information on the type of program, country, and inception. The insights given by server logs are utilized to inspect visitors activity by day, week, or a referral. Such visitors information can be broken down to improve websites. They can refresh your servers appropriately. It involves −
- The best level perspective of measurements
- Age and Gender of visitors
- Client conduct, their area, and interests
- The innovation they are utilizing, e.g., programs and working frameworks
- Breakdown of your site on gadgets other than the work area
- Visitors Flow
The statistics obtained from Search Engines enables:−
- Discover the revenue-producing keywords used in internet searches by visitors.
- How unique Search Engines influence your information?
- Where you are slacking and where you have to concentrate.
- Conversion funnels are the journey by which an objective is successfully concluded.
- Examples are Product buy, Leads, contact form submissions, surveys, etc.
- It is a series of steps covered by visitors to become customers.
Why do visitors leave your website?
Visitors log on to your website. They leave frequently. Use conversion funnels to analyze the following:-
- Why are they leaving the website?
- Is there any problem with the conversion path?
- or any broken link in the conversion path?
- A
ny other feature that is not working in the conversion path?
Dashboards can be created to reflect different characteristics. Examples are client personas, date run, and other information. Commonly grouped data is as shown under:-
Web Analytics Basics – Dashboards
A dashboard is a control panel’s index page for a website’s CMS in website administration. Some types of dashboards and the metrics used are given below:-
- Website Performance Dashboard: Website server response, average page load times, mobile or browser page load times.
- Real-Time Overview Dashboard: setting up widgets for real-time source and landing pages.
- SEO Dashboard – organic traffic, the keyword used in organic, total traffic, landing pages.
- Social Media Dashboard – traffic, sales & content sharing through channels used.
- PPC Dashboards: clicks, converted clicks & impressions.
- Content Dashboards: Top exit pages, blog post conversions & traffic monitoring.
Off-site and On-site web analytics.
- To do off-site analytics use panel data or ISP data. It can measure the potential website audience.
- For on-site analytics use Google Analytics. It can measure the actual visitor traffic arriving on the website
Web Analytics Basics – Tools
The most prevalent web analyst tool is Google Analytics. There are numerous other options available. They offer in particular data such as real-time activity and heat mapping.
- Google Analytics – The standard web analytics tool is free and widely utilized.
- Piwik – An open-source tool that is comparative to the Google Analytics tool. An option, that permits organization full ownership and control of the information databases.
- Adobe Analytics – A customized analytic tool by Adobe. It was purchased from analytics leader Omniture in 2009
- Kissmetrics – It can focus on individual behavior, cohort analysis, conversion,
and retention at the individual or segment level - Mixpanel – A propelled versatile web analytics tool. It can measures activities instead of page views.
- Parse.ly – Offers itemized real-time analytics, particularly for publishers.
- CrazyEgg – Measures which parts of the page are getting the most consideration utilizing ‘heat mapping’
- ClickTale – Utilizes ‘heat mapping,’ keystrokes and mouse development
- Optimizely – integrates with most of the leading analytics tools. It simplifies your data analysis.