Web Analytics Courses

An integral part of internet marketing, web analytics is an analysis of data for understanding user behavior on a website or across various web pages. This is inclusive of tracking, reviewing, and reporting data for measuring the volume of web activity. With website analytics, you will be able to monitor the number of visitors who visit the website/webpage, the time they stay on the website, the number of pages they visit, and whether they have landed on the website directly or via a link.

Businesses are using advanced web analytics to benchmark their website performance. They can track performance indicators like purchase conversion rate etc., from web analytics figures. Along with the understanding and measuring the volume of web traffic, web analytics is also a means of market and business research for improving business website effectiveness. With web analytics, a business can attract more visitors to the website, retain present customers, and increase the dollar volume every customer pays.

Technological advancements are taking place at lightning speed. Just imagine the volume of data that we produce every day now. With various web analytics tools, we can see what is happening on our business website and devise business plans accordingly. We can optimize and create sales funnels for generating leads on autopilot. But this was not so easy a few years back. It took some time for web analytics to evolve.

1990 - 2000 - The early years of the web

When the internet came in 1990, only a handful of businesses were confident about using this application. Only a few websites came on the web. Hits were an image or text on an HTML. Hits got recorded in log files. Website owners understood that it was essential to comprehend hits to decipher the website's performance. Log file analysis prompted the formation of early commercial web analytics companies.

The relevance of the hits became prominent as more and more websites came on the web. The internet became a way of doing online business. People thought about how to make money and generate leads using the internet. With the creation of Analog in 1995, the world learned about the first free log file analysis program. With Analog, website owners, as well as tech teams, could understand the working of the website.

Marketers could focus more on analytics development. By publishing blogs, the owner could see how many visitors came there. Blogs became a favorite way of driving traffic to the website.

By 1997, more developments took place with the availability of audio and video on the internet. Web analytics had to consider all these mediums and actions taking place on different business websites. JavaScript tags helped filter ‘hit’ data and gave more accurate analytics results.

The period of 2000s

2004 saw the formation of the Web Analytics Association, which is presently the Digital Analytics Association. Web analytics became a formal thing with the development of new tools. Website optimization became possible. Working with vast volumes of data became convenient. Social media platforms and search engine marketing (SEM) came into the picture. Businesses understood that they must understand trends and work with many traffic channels.

It was at this time that Google emerged as the prominent search engine. Google launched Google Analytics and immediately became the most coveted web analytics tool in the market. Google Analytics has close ties with Google’s marketing tools. This gave opportunities to businesses for marketing, optimizing, and expanding their website's presence. Websites could drive more traffic and bring in leads and revenues.

2010 and years after that

With the release of universal analytics by Google, you could track users across multiple platforms and devices. It became possible to report offline behavior and data too. Post-2010, the use of smartphones and mobile apps increased manifold times. It became quite a job for online marketers and business owners to assimilate all the pieces and optimize the web traffic that a website is driving.

The incorporation of machine learning in Google Analytics in 2016 is a giant leap. Marketers get real-time monitoring, brilliant insights, and other relevant metrics to understand website performance. With many analytics tools in the market, businesses can deliver great experiences for customers and prospects, leading to the generation of more leads. Marketers are also using web analytics in digital marketing to bring the best results.

It is crucial to implement a web analytics measurement strategy to make effective marketing and business decisions. Mentioned below are some critical components of web analytics:

Referrers

When you want to understand visitor conversion, you need to know from where the visitor came. A referrer is a website from where you get traffic. Look for more referrers on your existing network or in your industry. You can build a positive relationship with the referrers through blog conversations, social network activity, or writing articles related to your niche. You may get more conversions from human referrals.

Measurement

You can utilize web analytics to its full potential through a web measurement process. Previously, ‘hits’ were measured, and now analytics comes with a more sophisticated value. You can directly measure many basic metrics like bounce rates, visits, conversions, and referrers depending upon the result that you want from your website.

Call to Action Clicks

Your main target is to inspire your audience to take some action after visiting your website. And this is where the ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) button comes into the picture. In the website design, the CTA button should be visible prominently. With heat map reports, you can understand the user activity on your website. You can also locate the spots where they are clicking. With the heat map report, you can change your analytics implementation to boost conversion rates.

Bounce Rates and Exit Rates

Any business website's target is to grab users' attention successfully. To understand this, analyze two metrics closely - bounce and exit rates. With the exit rate, you will get an idea of the number of people leaving your website through a particular page. Bounce rates will provide information regarding the number of people who left your website without going to a second page. As per statistics, 50% of users bounce after seeing just one page.

Conversions

Conversion is the ultimate target of your business. As per Contentsquare, 2.3% is the average conversion rate. If you have reached as far as the conversion stage, it implies that you have impressed the visitors and grabbed attention. Now you must follow the proper steps for successful conversion. Give your customers time so that they can complete the intended action peacefully. A great way to ensure a smooth conversion is by optimizing the customers' web forms. Make the check-out process or form submission procedure user-friendly and hassle-free.

Different kinds of web analytics reports are available to understand how users interact on a website. Web designers and online marketing professionals use these reports to understand customer behavior and patterns. Along with traffic reporting, page views, and website visitors, there is much more to web analytics, and companies should leverage those benefits.

Here are the different types of web analytics you need to know:

Social web analytics

We all know how social media platforms have become integral to our lives. Businesses are also leveraging these platforms for marketing their services and products. Depending on your business requirements, you can run various campaigns on these platforms. We all know that social interactions on the internet have become extremely popular today.

With social web analytics, you can measure the success of your campaigns in the world of social media. You can track the sharing of your posts and blogs in various places. You can also analyze which social media platform sends the maximum business to your website.

Content web analytics

Do you know that your business website's content drives customers to your site? This is where you can make a difference and have the edge over your competitors. You must understand what kind of content draws visitors to a business website. If your website does not have such engaging and interactive content, make sure that you revise the content immediately.

To analyze your website content, you can use web analytics tools. The tool will help you understand which pages on the website are the most popular. You might find that a particular page on the website is drawing the maximum eyeballs - work on that page to improve it. Again some pages are a complete dud. Ask your content team to work on these pages and make them appealing to users and the audience in general.

With proper content analysis, you will understand the frequency of each page visit. You will also have information about the user's time on the webpage. Most importantly, you will come to know if the visitors get converted into customers. Customer patterns show that when a user fails to find something on a website, the ‘search’ function comes in handy. With analytics, you can track what customers are searching on your business website. If the particular content is unavailable on your website, make arrangements to add the content immediately.

To ensure business success, you have to understand the flow of visitors through your website.

Mobile web analytics

Smartphones have become part and parcel of our lives. We carry out most of our work via our phones now. From surfing the internet to making payments, we can accomplish almost anything via smartphones. Most businesses are currently developing apps so that people can easily access various services and products.

With mobile web analytics, you can understand the way your customers use the mobile app. It is possible to track customers if they purchase via the mobile app or laptop/computer. With this data, you can understand if you need to make amendments to the mobile app. It might happen that the marketing plan that you are implementing is not working right for your mobile app. You need to change your app's marketing strategy to make it most effective.