Web Analytics Overview
Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.
The focus of web analytics
is to understand the users of a site, their behavior, and activities.
The study of online user behavior and activities generate valuable
marketing intelligence and provides −
Performance measures of the website against targets.
Insight on user behaviors and needs, and how the site meets those needs.
Optimization ability to make modifications to improve the website based on the results.
Web Analytics Tools
An average
web analytics tool offers hundreds of metrics. All of them are interesting but only a few would be useful for measuring the
website’s performance. Focus on what is important to get meaningful insights on your
website, and start your
web analytics initiative by defining realistic and measurable objectives for your site.
In order to identify the users, web analytics tools
need to report on user sessions (also referred to as visits). There are
different techniques to identify users such as IP addresses, user agent
and IP address combination, cookies, and authenticated user.
Nowadays,
the most common user identification technique is via cookies which are
small packets of data that are usually deposited on the user’s computer
hard disk when the person visits a website.
How to Review Web Metrics
When
reviewing metrics, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you
are encompassing the set of data that best evaluates your efficiency −
Think People and Process
No
doubt, technology is important, but you need to go beyond it. Take time
and care to thoroughly understand your stakeholders’ measurement needs.
Segmentation
There’s
more to data than just total number of page views. Many organizations
unfortunately still report on total page views and miss out on all the
non-page view interactions such as video, downloads and rich media.
Analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, MixPanel,
Flurry and others, are very powerful and allow us the ability to go
beyond simplistic hit collection, and really dive into rich data and
patterns.
You can easily report and derive
insights with visitor segmentation, have quick visibility into buyer or
non-buyer behavior, group content by asset type, measure gated or
ungated content consumption, and with relatively ease run a cohort analysis. These are just a few views that could be utilized while segmenting your data.
Think Visitors, Not Visits
Explore
data such as where visitors came from, what course they took between
pages while on your website, and where they spent the most (or least)
time during their visit. Later, after two or three visits they got
converted to customers. With this information, you’re able to gain
increased awareness of visitors and how they interact with your content
throughout the buying cycle.
Optimize What Matters Most
Optimize
conversions on all things digital. Take it one notch higher and
optimize on the Lifetime Value of a customer. Put into place a system
that gives you the ability to measure behavior and interaction across
multi-devices and multiple channels for (most) users that come from
mobile,
web, etc.
Maximize Returns
You’ll
maximize the return on gathering, reporting and analyzing data, when
you do so consistently. Commit to the process and develop a list of
priorities and a measurement “roadmap.” Audit what you have
periodically.
Websites and mobile apps are constantly evolving, so ensure your
analytics implementation is in-line with such changes.
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