Web Analytics

Not analyzing your web analytics data is like not looking at your financial books.

What is Web Analytics?

Web Analytics can be defined as the Study of online experience in order to improve it. It is the study of website visitors' behavior. In a commercial context, Web analytics especially refers to the use of data collected from a website to determine which aspects of the site work towards the business objectives; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase.

At a general level, data collected almost always includes Web traffic reports. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators (KPIs) and used to improve a website or marketing campaign's audience response.

Web Analytics, also referred to as website traffic analysis, gives you information that you can leverage to better understand how visitors are interacting with your website, and how you can dramatically increase your customer conversion rates.

Every website must have business goals and defined objectives. When customers realize those goals, you have conversions. As the website owner, you can use metrics data to encourage visitors to purchase, subscribe, register, make referrals, or accomplish other goals that can be both measured and optimized. Yes, it's possible to funnel Web analytics information directly to the bottom line and turn data into Euros. Contact WSI E-Services to find out how to follow the scent of a customer.

With Web analytics you can learn some of the following key information:

Overall visitor data
Top performing keywords
Most visited pages
Most popular conversion paths
Visitor segmentation data
Search Engine Marketing Campaigns performance and return on investment and much more

Why Web Analytics is so important?

The “online cycle” starts with your website; this is the first step. Next comes the efforts of driving targeted traffic to your website – be it with SEO efforts, PPC campaigns, Email Marketing tactics. But this is not enough: you need to ensure that your visitors are converted to being customers (or – on the way there – fulfilling the site’s goals). This can only be done by measuring, tracking and improving your KPI’s.

Unlike with traditional media (radio, newspaper, etc’), Internet Marketing is where everything is measurable. This means that you can track to a granular level how you marketing initiatives are performing and to measure you return on investment since, at the end of the day, you are investing in marketing campaigns to increase sales, reduce costs and/or improve profitability. It’s time you do marketing that brings results rather than just advertize because “this is what businesses are doing”. In order to measure those initiatives, you need to use web analytics.

By running web analytics using Google Analytics you should learn how users get to and use your website. In addition, you should be able to analyze sales trends and how they are connected to your other Search Engine Marketing and Internet Marketing efforts (or even to your offline traditional marketing campaigns).

Proper analysis of data from Google Analytics will help you answer difficult questions such as (the list is much longer):

Is your website design driving potential customers away?
Which marketing initiatives are the most effective for your business and website?
Why and what points are visitors abandoning your shopping cart?
Where are your site visitors coming from?
What do people do while visiting your website?
What keywords and from which search engines visitors use to get to your website?

Google Analytics reports give you thorough, easy-to-understand visual reports that define variables about users as segments and analyze the behavior of each segment and can even track e-commerce metrics such as revenues and conversion rates.

One report can give you insights regarding (example only): the total number of visitors and how many page they viewed per day; the percentages of new versus returning visitors; A map of where your site’s visitors are geographically located; a breakdown of the referring sources that linked visitors to your site (i.e. – followed a link from another website)

You can learn a great deal about who your visitors are and how they interact with your website. Web analytics can tell you how they arrived at your site -– did they arrive via a search engine, follow a link to your site, click on your pay-per-click ad, or type in your website address directly into their browser. You can tell how long they stayed on each page, where they clicked, what pages they viewed as well as from which page they exited your site.

Once you understand visitors' behavior, you will be able to identify and eliminate navigational obstacles that slow down or prevent visitors from completing the conversion goal. The result will be an improved visitor experience encouraging more conversions WSI E-Services can show you a scientific, logically progressive way to make more money online using Web Analytics.Call Ikonic Solutions for a meeting today!

Professional Web Analytics by Ikonic Solutions

Web Analytics is a Process. If anything else, Web analytics is a continuous improvement process. It is not enough just to look at a report each month; those reports need to be analyzed so you can ensure that the website is always responding to the needs of its visitors. In essence, web analytics can be broken down into thesix-step process outlined here.

It is evident why web analytics is defined as a continuous improvement process. Once you gathered your data, analyzed the results, proposedchanges and implemented these changes you repeat the process all over again.

It could also be that you have installed Google Analytics and you understand the importance of Web Analytics. Are are you able to make sense of the data your Google Analytics is providing you?

Online, almost everything can be measured: uniquevisitors, clicks, engagement, buzz, open rates, conversions, demographics, branding, and time spent are just a few examples of the many available metrics. Marketers and business owners like yourself embrace the very real potential of all this information, but often feel overwhelmed by mountains of data, as well as threatened by the technology that delivers the solutions.

If you feel this way too, you’re not alone. The truth is Analytics is complex, and unless you have previous experience in analyzing website data, the task will be daunting. We are trained and can discuss adapting measurement methodologies, processes and tools into what makes sense and can also dramatically lift your company's online marketing and business performance.

Regardless of your web analytics needs, we as your qualified Internet Marketing consultants can provide you with the relevant analytics services that are tailored to your overall online business objectives. Contact Ikonic Solutions today for more information.