Why Web Analytics Should be Important to You In our Insights series, we ve explored many aspects of running a successful website. Keeping a close eye on visitor information is an important aspect of achieving your website marketing goals. Web analytics is an integral part of any web strategy, helping you understand what works and what doesn t. Never in the field of marketing has cause and effect been more measurable or actionable. After developing an online marketing initiative or revamping the look of your current website, you will need the tools and know-how to measure the success of those changes. Website analytics is key to a successful website. To start, you need to understand the basics. What is Web Analytics? Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purpose of understanding and optimizing web usage. Getting your visitor to explore your site is the start of the process. You then need to understand what happens once they are on your website. Now for the hard questions. Ask yourself... What purpose does my website serve? How well is it doing? If you cannot answer these questions, throw in the towel. Luckily, you can take control of the situation before it gets out of hand by following our 6 steps to success!
Step 1: Align What You Measure to Business Objectives Business Goals business Setting the right business goals will keep your business on track rather than derail it. Set business goals in order to properly measure success. Site Goals www The success of any website can only be measured by the goals you set. Not having goals will make it impossible to measure your website s performance. Segment-based Key Performance Indicators Establish segment-based key performance indicators. Here are a few examples: Conversion rate by segment Sales value by segment Net profit per ad channel Cart abandonment rate
Step 2: Set Up to Measure Tag all the on-site pages Once you have a Google Analytics account, you will be assigned an identification code. The identification code must be added to your web pages to track website visitor statistics. Implement the tracking code on all web pages. Your website will also likely provide users with ways to interact with your content that does not generate views of separate pages. Examples include downloading a brochure, interacting with a video or Flash movie or submitting a customer review or comment. Because these interactions are crucial to understanding how engaged your visitors are with your site content, it is critical that you tag all of your events in addition to all of your pages. Tag all the inbound stuff Insert your Google Analytics codes in your online ad campaigns, social media initiatives and blogs. This will help you gather valuable visitor information on these initiatives. Clean, precise data is the key When reviewing your data, remove anything that will skew your analysis. A good example is to weed out your office traffic or your own traffic; this additional data could artificially boost your numbers. The goal of this exercise is to collect as much clean data as possible.
Step 3: Analysis Review When reviewing your data, don t take averages into consideration! Analyze by segmenting the data. This will identify which initiatives are performing and which ones are not. As an example, let s say that your paid ads cost $0.30 per click, convert at 2%, with an average order of $100. This may seem good on the surface but what if segmentation tells you that Google Adwords cost $0.35 per click, convert at 3% and generate $125 per order while Facebook ads cost $0.25 per click, convert at 1%, and generate $85 per order. Your Google Adwords campaign has a higher ROI than the Facebook campaign. What would you say now? Stay hyper vigilant as peeling back the layers can save you money. Always segment your visitors, originating sources, interaction with content and conversion rate. Analyze all your processes Always ask yourself if your process can be improved. Do you know at what rate visitors abandon your checkout process? Do your visitors seem to stumble at the same point when filling out your online contact form to obtain additional information? Analysis will provide the insight you need to improve these processes.
Step 4: Derive Insights Channel effectiveness Determine which visitors contribute to your profitability & site goals and weed out the visitors that are not contributing. Content effectiveness Figure out what site content is compelling to your audience. Making good use of compelling content will inevitably lead to better results. Search engines are designed to look for original content. Determine if that content contributes to site goals. Process effectiveness Once again take a look at your website protocols and processes, there is always room for improvement. Determine how effective your site processes are at driving site goals. Insights from this step are crucial and will serve as the basis to test site improvements and modifications.
Step 5: Test It, Change It and Measure It Again Determine if your goals and milestones have been reached by referencing your data. If an initiative is failing to deliver, don t be afraid to change things up and try again. The thought process can be broken down into 2 categories: INSIGHT Analyse and breakdown data into manageable portions for easy review. 20% of prospective customers abandoned carts at the first step in the checkout process. HYPOTHESIS Develop a hypothesis based on your findings, determine if this is a specific issue or if it is website wide. Those that abandon are unwilling to create a customer account. They just want to buy and go without having to sign-in.
Step 6: Embed Web Analytics Within the Company s Website Process. Like anything in life, if you want to get results, try and try again. You will need to integrate web analytics into your work process. Reviewing visitor data should become second nature. As indicated in figure 1, implementing web analytics into your website process will affect all aspects of your website. Figure 1: Integrating Web Analytics into the Website Work Process Conclusion An investment in analytics is an investment in your business. Building and promoting your site is only part of the job. You need to measure, test and rebuild to remain competitive and ensure continued success. You can build your capability over time. Our IgnitionWeb platform can help you maximize your marketing dollars, with built in SEO & Analytics capabilities, managing your website has never been easier. For more information on how to get the most out of your website using Web Analytics, contact: Tom Kouri or Freddy Davy at 514-739-2461 2010 High-Touch Communications Inc. HourGlass and IgnitionWeb are registered trademarks of High-Touch Communications Inc. All rights reserved.