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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
A web analyst is a professional who uses analytical skills to pull data collection from websites. The data ranges from web servers' performance to website visitors' behaviors. Web analysts also oversee statistics related to search engine optimization, keyword density, and link management. The professionals keep a close watch on the trends in online marketing to enhance the overall customer journey and bettering webpage functionality. Their main aim is to increase conversions and page views.
A web analyst also has other names like digital analyst or web analytics specialist. Some of the responsibilities that a web analyst handles include:
Learning web analytics has become an inevitable part of online business. Online marketers combine conversion rate optimization services and web analytics to get the best business insights. What matters most is analyzing the traffic coming to the business website and then looking for ways to improve it.
Once you successfully track the analytics, you can measure vital information like page views, clicks, conversions, and sales. With proper analytics, you can change your website content to make it more appealing and grab the audience's attention.
When you measure and analyze web data from analytics, you can understand usage and web traffic well. This gives you the scope of optimizing the data for improving your business website. Analytics data also help you decipher how well your SEO plans are working. You might not be aware that web analytics acts as an excellent tool for market research.
When we talk of web analytics data, we consider these things:
Here's why you must learn web analytics for your business:
Do you intend to make a career in web analytics? Becoming a web analyst is a lucrative career option now. We all know that web analytics and digital analytics are the hottest fields today, with ample scopes of employment opportunities in them. However, becoming a certified web analyst is not a cakewalk. There are many challenges that a web analyst has to face, but the job is fascinating.
Highly skilled web analysts are in demand as data-driven marketing is rising. There are two categories in this job role - one is an analyst role, and the other is a technical role. The analyst role involves the creation of reports and data analysis. On the other hand, the specialized role includes implementing various tools like Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics.
Here are some skills that you must have to become a web analyst:
It is a well-known fact that depicting anything via images or graphical representations remains embedded in the mind for a long time. As a web analyst, you should have the skills to learn how to present data in the most meaningful manner. So, you must have deep knowledge of your target audience. You can then create an effective marketing strategy for your business.
While analyzing data, you might need to interpret and explain various technical and complex concepts to your audience. And for this, you must have strong communication skills. Experts opine that most data analysts lack this skill and need to work upon it. Analysts can follow a simple process for bettering communication skills. It is as follows:
This is not exactly a skill, but you must have this knowledge and understanding to become a successful web analyst. You will not be able to optimize and analyze traffic channels if you don't know how they function. You don’t need in-depth knowledge of these matters, but basic knowledge is a prerequisite. It would be excellent if you could devote a few hours weekly to enhance your online marketing skill.
Technical skills do not mean you must start coding on the website. To become a web analyst, you do not need a technical background. However, when you have some technological know-how, your job becomes easier for sure. While communicating with different departments, using technical language helps a lot. Try learning basic JavaScript and HTML skills.
Becoming a self-starter is the best option for any web analyst. This profession demands constant learning. It is great to attend webinars and seminars or read various books on the subject to update yourself. You can always seek helps from experts for learning new web analytics skills, but self-learning is the best thing possible.
Web analytics is a vast subject with many sections and sub-sections. It takes quite some time to learn the basics of web analytics as there are many diverse topics. However, if you want to explore and learn more about web analytics, you can enroll in a free web analytics course.
Many institutes are offering different kinds of courses on web analytics. While some of the courses just cover the basics of the topic, others provide deep insight into the subject. In the elaborate courses, you will learn about the immaculate details of the topic. You can also choose from a web analytics specialist course or an advanced web analytics course.
The duration of the courses varies depending on the depth of information they impart. A program offering the fundamentals of web analytics will be of less time when compared to a detailed course on the subject.
Apart from taking up a web analytics class, another way to learn more about the subject is with practical experience. Once you are in this field, start reading extensively on the subject. We all know that the web world is a highly dynamic space where upgrades take place quite frequently. You must update yourself by keeping track of the upgrades that take place.
Along with extensive reading, you can also participate in various seminars and webinars that multiple companies host to learn more about web analytics. Generally, experts in the field put forward their opinions and suggestions in various seminars/webinars about web analytics. You will get ideas and insights as to how you can become a better web analyst. You will also get information on the latest trends in web analytics and how marketers are leveraging benefits from them.
There was a time when web analytics was understood by web developers alone. Website owners and even online marketing professionals did not know much about the topic. However, everything has become data-driven now. It is also important to mention the digital revolution in the web world, which is changing things drastically.
Online marketers are investing mainly in free website analytics as a business tool. As the web is expanding, brands are bound to increase their expenses on ‘marketing analytics’ to sustain in this cut-throat competitive market.
Over-abundance of data is a major concern in online marketing. Many think it is one of the significant web challenges analytics too. But, often, marketers cannot connect the relevant data with key performance indicators and meaningful business objectives. As a result, obtaining complete insight into the business website becomes impossible.
Many online marketers make the mistake that good numbers of social media shares or innumerable page impressions mean the business is doing great. You have to focus on how much engagement people have with your content - just seeing and sharing the content is not enough.
Online marketers analyze the web data that they obtain and represent them in the form of reports. But doing that will not suffice - web analytics has many more uses. Marketers will witness steady improvements in their campaigns by using data analytics effectively. It is an excellent way of funneling more visitors toward successful conversions.
Here are some of the most effective ways to use web analytics for your business:
A professional in web analytics knows that in A/B testing, you create double versions of a single asset like an email, display ad, or even a landing page. Once done, you test the results with a particular segment of your audience. You can use web analytics to track the result of the asset on the website.
Here is one instance to clear the point. Suppose you create a landing page with a web form. In one version, you place the web form on the screen’s left side, and in the other version, you place it on the screen’s right side. Check which version the form completion rate is high. This will be the obvious choice for the business.
By using web analytics, you can track the engagement with your website content, particularly with your website's landing pages. Check if there are problems between form completions and click-throughs. Monitor your conversion rate. Try and understand if people respond to your CTAs by following the internal link structure. Keep an eye if the visitors ‘bounce’ after staying on the website for 30 seconds.
With these insights, you can understand the most engaging content. You can make suitable adjustments to the tactics for maximizing brand awareness and lead acquisition.
If you judiciously use retargeting ads, you can bring back visitors to your website. Web analytics plays a major role in managing retargeting ads. By using web analytics, it is possible to track conversion goals for URLs that contain specific keywords or particular URLs in general. When a prospective customer makes a purchase or shows signs of conversion, analytics shut off the ads. Ad performance tracking is possible in real-time, including clicks, ad spend, conversions, and impressions.
You might not know that web analytics is an integral part of lead scoring. The purpose of lead scoring is to track leads and prospects when they subscribe to the website, browse through various pages on the website, register with the website, download assets from the website, and share website content. In the background, a web analytics engine processes all these events. Post-processing, the allocation of events takes place to particular contact profiles.
Your business website can do nothing without proper search engine optimization. At the same time, you cannot undermine the importance of web analytics for your business website. It is essential to follow a proper SEO strategy with an end-to-end approach. You have first to enlist all your vital keywords. Then develop quality content around the keywords. Lastly, use web analytics to track the website's rankings and performance.
For running your web analytics project, you have to gather business requirements. Believe it or not, gathering these requirements is a complex process. The requirements can be sorted in the below-mentioned points:
These are some of the fantastic benefits of web analytics:
Using web analytics helps in improving sales and traffic to the business website by making slight alterations in the marketing campaigns.
Here are some ways in which you can use web analytics to gain insights:
Using different kinds of tools for web analytics makes working easier and hassle-free.
These are some of the most common and popular web analytics tools:
Many people consider Google Analytics to be synonymous with web analytics. One of the best free web analytics tools, it helps in tracking and analyzing web traffic data. You will get a picture of the keywords that bring maximum visitors to the website. Google Analytics for website generates reports for your site, including data on traffic sources, visitors, content, goals, bounce rates, and e-commerce. Real-time updates are available via this tool. According to BuiltWith statistics, Google Analytics is used on almost 30 million websites globally.
After the popularity of Google Analytics, the web analytics tool that is most in demand is Adobe Analytics. This is a multichannel data collection tool from Adobe. This specialist analytics tool offers analytics data from not only the web but also other platforms like OTT, voice, and IoT (Internet of Things). This tool's primary concentration is machine learning and predictive algorithms for more advanced insights.
Piwik offers complete control over your data along with creating your plugins. The web analytics tool comes with a privacy and data ownership feature, insights, and a faster interface. The plugin-based tool is free of cost. However, the pro version starts at $65 per month.
Gauges is a real-time web analytics software that tracks mobile and website data in real-time. You will get detailed information on the number of visitors that visit your website. You will get live traffic status via this tool. This tool provides detailed information on pages that are not bringing in traffic. The tool comes with a free trial, after which you have to pay $6.00 per user per month.
Among the various well-known web analytics tools, Splunk Storm has created a niche for itself. It initially began as a ‘Google for log files.’ the main purpose of using this tool was to process machine log files data. Recent updates have added many new features to the tool. There are great visualization options in the tool. With the addition of a web interface, using the tool has become quite convenient.
Along with being a web analytics tool, GoSquared is also a marketing automation tool, that helps in boosting website conversions. With the dashboard, you can manage this tool across all devices. You will get an accurate count of the number of visitors to your website. You can also gauge the surfing patterns of users via the tool. The tool offers information about the operating system used by the user for accessing your website. The tool has the capability of giving an estimate of weekly, daily, and monthly traffic depending on historical data.
ClickTale is a customer behavior analytics tool. With this tool, you can analyze user behavior patterns on mobile apps and the web with session replays and heatmaps. The tool offers bounce reports and form analytics. This tool is mostly used for analyzing exit rates. This is not a free web analytics tool and the price is in the range of $99 - 790.
Heap is a very impressive web analytics tool that comes with point-and-click interfaces. This user-friendly tool excels in tracking almost everything right from form submissions to video play to file downloads. Heap records the minutest of data for future references. The basic version of the tool is free; while the Pro version comes in the range of $59 - 399.
One of the most popular web analytics tools, KISSMetrics helps marketers in tracking the movements of visitors throughout the website. The tool also provides other statistics like recent referrers, changes in the behavior of users over time, identifying different patterns, etc. In the tool, you can view the stats in a visual format. There is a free trial period of 30 days. Then plans commence at $149 per month.
Just like other web analytics tools, Clicky gives you real-time analytics. The tool provides information on what current visitors are doing on the website. The dashboard of the tool is simple and user-friendly. From the mobile version of the tool, you can check the statistics from anywhere at any time. Both free and paid versions of the tool are available.
There are specific parameters that web analytics helps you to measure. Some of them are:
Visits vs. unique visitors - With web analytics, you can measure the ratio and volume of visits and unique visitors. Some users visit the website/web page regularly, and then some unique visitors visit the site randomly. When there are more regular visitors, it is suitable for any business.
Pageviews vs. visits - There is a difference between website visits and page views. A visit is when a user lands on your website from some external page or another website. On the other hand, a page view is when a page on a website is loaded or reloaded, and the user can already be on the site or might come from another site. Web analytics measures this difference immaculately.
Bounce Rate - One of the most common terms in web analytics, bounce rate refers to website visits that are single-page sessions. The visitor leaves the website without going to any other second page. By measuring this metric, you can understand the website's overall engagement.
Time on site - Also known as session duration, this is the total time that a visitor spends on the website right from coming on the landing page to navigating away from the website. Measuring this time helps in understanding user interest in the website. A user spending more time on a website indicates a high chance of a conversion.
Traffic sources - Measuring traffic sources helps marketers understand the areas from which traffic is flowing to your website. All sources bringing an influx of traffic are not always credible. Analytics will segregate those from good sources.
Marketing activities and strategies vary from one business to another. With web analytics, marketers can understand the results of the various strategies being used.
If marketers can use analytics tools properly, it helps fuel marketing success. This is how it happens:
Learning the website visitor’s behavior - Tools like Google Analytics provide insights into the actions of visitors. The tool includes information on what pages visitors visit and their actions. You will also get detailed reports on bounce rate, page views, exit percentage, average time spent on a page, unique pageviews, etc. Marketing strategies can be devised keeping these pointers in mind.
Knowing the traffic source - Various web analytics tools help identify the source of traffic coming to the website. Once you know the sources, you can engage audiences likewise. You can track if your audience found you through social media platforms, organic search, directly visiting your website or paid advertising.
Improving content marketing - Now that you have deep insights about your website with various web analytics tools, you can work on them for devising content marketing strategies and efforts. Work towards improving the website's content to become more relevant to the audience. Update the blogs, optimize them, and promote them on various channels, including social media.
If you intend to be a web analyst or are a beginner in this field, it is good if you take up a web analytics course online. The introductory course will give you a fair idea of website analytics, and you can begin your career as a web analyst. One of the main reasons for choosing an online web analytics class is that these courses are more comprehensive compared to offline classes. Moreover, you get high-quality information from these website analytics courses. The information is not only accurate but updated as well.
Another reason why many people choose to take up web analyst certification online is that it is less expensive compared to its offline counterpart. You don’t need to travel to the institute for the classes in the online course. You can take the online classes at your convenience and at suitable times.
On completing an online web analytics course from a reputed institute, you will get guaranteed placements in the best companies. Many online courses also offer website analytics training to students to prepare them better for the web analyst role.
Innumerable institutes are offering the best web analytics courses to interested candidates. The syllabus slightly varies from one place to another. However, there are specific topics that all website analytics courses will cover. They are as follows:
It is pretty evident that the web analytics industry is flourishing globally. People across the globe are using the internet for their businesses. This is generating huge volumes of data every moment. As per a market research report, in 2018, the value of the web analytics market was $2.63 billion. There is a projection that by 2026, this figure will reach up to $10.73 billion. The growth is at a CGAR of 19.3% from 2019 to 2026.
Below is a graphical representation of the web analytics market growth rate based on geographical location (2020-2025). This representation clearly shows that there will be a surge in the growth rate in the web analytics market in the coming years in the Asia Pacific region.
Marketing trends have evolved, making way for digital and online marketing today. Web analytics is a crucial part of digital marketing in India and globally. It is great to know the digital population of India stood at 658 million as of 2021. Even better, when it comes to marketing and advertising expenses in India, the allotment for digital media was at 30% in 2021. It is expected that this figure will reach 38% by 2023. It indicates that digital marketing has set a firm footstep in India.
With an estimated digital media market value of INR 537 billion, it is evident that demand for web analytics courses will be surging in the country. In India, numerous institutes offer courses in web analytics and related subjects. Candidates can take the courses online or offline as per their preference and convenience.
A web analytics specialist’s salary in India is INR 1,167,500 per annum.
The salary of web analytics specialists in India primarily depends on their work experience. The higher the number of years in this industry, the higher the pay. Along with experience, other factors impacting the salary of a web analytics specialist in India include job location, educational qualifications, analysis skills, different kinds of projects on which the specialist has worked, etc.
The average web analytics specialist starting salary in India is INR 5,96,097 per annum.
A web analytics specialist salary in the USA is $62,204 per annum.
The salary of a web analytics specialist who stays in the USA depends on his location. It is interesting that in some places in the USA, web analytics specialists' salaries are high compared to other areas. The location, work experience, skills, educational qualifications, employers’ list, and the kinds of projects the candidate has managed will decide the web analytics specialist salary.
The average web analytics specialist starting salary in the USA is $ 44,494 per annum.
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Web analytics is the process of analyzing visitors coming to a website. The process also includes the collection, measurement, analysis, and reporting of data for understanding and optimizing web usage.
Some of the most popular web analytics tools are:
Many institutes offer courses on web analytics. Choose the one which will help your career. Upon completing the course, you will receive a free web analytics certification.
The two main categories of web analytics are - off-site and on-site web analytics.
Web analytics tools are extremely insightful regarding finding out how your users or website visitors interact with your website and its data.
Web analytics is undoubtedly a great career option in today’s day and age when every business is trying to build a reputable online presence.
The main skills required for web analytics include business acumen, problem-solving skills, data visualisation skills, adaptation skills, strong communication skills, and technical skills.
The Web Analytics Market was valued at USD 3.01 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 7.05 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 15.2% over the forecast period 2021 - 2026. The global web analytics market is anticipated to gain momentum from the steady rise in marketing automation and online shopping trends.
understanding of coding and being able to review written code will come in handy in the long run.
KPIs stand for key performance indicators. These are metrics used to measure and benchmark your performance against.
No, web analytics does not directly require you to know or be familiar with the Python programming language.
Five main elements of successful web analytics include measurement, bounce rates, referrers, CTA clicks, and conversions.
The difference between KPIs and OKRs can be understood by realising the goal behind the process. In that way, OKRs are much more ambitious and aggressive, while KPIs are largely achievable.
Web analytics and its insights are useful for all businesses having a running website with regular visitors. That way, they will get a chance to dive into how their visitors interact with the website deeply.
Most web analytics tools tag their web pages by inserting a JavaScript code snippet in the web page's footer to maintain an identity.