Web Analytics: Tools and Advantages

Businesses are mostly shifted online these days, especially newer ones. Old or new, any business requires data to function. It needs to collect data about the activity history, ongoing activities, customer data, policies and strategies, and many more. 

 

Web analytics is extremely important in determining the performance of expenditures made in terms of online advertisements, consumers, and business profitability. It also calculates the Return On Investment (ROI) of any company.

 

In this article, we will learn about the following and discuss them in detail:

 

• What is web analytics?

• Tools used in Web analytics

• Advantages of web analytics

 

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What is Web Analytics?

 

Web analytics is the process of gathering, processing, and evaluating data from websites. It is also known as online analytics as it improves customer experience over the internet and enhances the business prospects of any company. 

 

Web analytics has many applications like it shows web navigation patterns, time-specific website traffic, search engine data, visitor data, etc. With the help of web analytics, successful and effective marketing campaigns, online sales, advertisements, and a boost in profit are also experienced by users. 

 

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There are mainly two types of web analytics:

 

• On-site web analytics tracks visitors' behavior once they arrive at the website. As an example, consider measuring the performance of your website.

• Off-site web analysis is the measurement and analysis of a website regardless of whether it is owned or maintained. Measurement of visibility, comments, prospective audience, and so on, for example.

 

Working of Web Analytics:

 

Now that we know the basic definition and types of web analytics, let us learn how web analytics work from Wikipedia and optimizely. 

 

1. The web analytics process starts with the collection of elementary data. Typically, these statistics represent counts of several items. Then, the collected information is processed. This stage generally takes counts and converts them to ratios, but some counts may still be present. The goal of this stage is to convert the data into information, especially metrics. 

 

2. Most analytics solutions ‘tag' their web pages by adding a piece of JavaScript into the code of the web page. The analytics tool uses this tag to track each time a visitor or a link is clicked on a website. The tag can also collect other information such as device, browser, and geographic location (via IP address).

 

3. Cookies may also be used by web analytics firms to monitor individual sessions and pinpoint repeat visits from the same browser. Because some users erase cookies and browsers have varied limits on code snippets, no analytics platform can guarantee the complete accuracy of their data, and different programs provide somewhat different findings at times.

 

4. The process then moves on to the following stage, which mostly focuses on leveraging the ratios (and counts) and infusing them with business strategy, referred to as key performance indicators (KPI). KPIs frequently, but not always, address conversion issues. It is determined by the organization. Finally, an online strategy is prepared to depend on the goals and objects of the company. 

 

5. Experiments are another important feature established by analysts for website improvement. In online contexts such as web development, A/B testing is a controlled trial with two versions. A/B testing's objective is to find and recommend modifications to web pages that improve or maximize the influence of a statistically tested outcome of interest.

 

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Tools used in Web Analytics

 

When it comes to the many web analytics tools that your company requires, the multitude of available alternatives might be intimidating for companies that don't know how to utilize them. 

 

There are many tools in the market that perform web analytics. Here are the top 7 tools used in web analytics.

 

1. Google Analytics:

 

Google Analytics is the first tool that is considered when it comes to web analytics. It is a totally free service that is user-friendly, updated, and very easy to use. It provides detailed statistics about the website visitors. 

 

According to inc.com, it is used by over 50% of the top 10,000 websites of the world. It searches the visitors’ history and sources, their activities, and frequency in the website and gives out more detailed reports on better involvement. It is one of the most popular and used web analytics tools.

 

 

2. Yahoo Web analytics:

 

Yahoo web analytics is like the advanced version of google analytics in terms of profiling, filtering, and customization. Once one has been well versed with google analytics, he/she can move to yahoo web analytics for a more detailed survey, and the best part is, it is also completely free to use. 

 

It provides improved user access choices and a more straightforward approach to multi-site analytics, raw and real-time data gathering (unlike Google, which allows users to input cost of goods data), visitor activity and statistics, and customizable options. 

 

 

3. Google Website optimizer

 

As we have learned in the previous section that experimentation is a very crucial step in the process of web analytics and one such free tool that helps in the experimentation and testing is the google website optimizer. 

 

It is a complicated testing program that allows users to rotate different parts of information on their website to discover which sections and placements generate the most hits and, ultimately, the most revenue. 

 

Everything starting from headlines to texts can be the users’ choice for experimentation and it is the only A/B testing and Multivariate testing solution. 

 

 

4. Facebook Insights:

 

This is another free web analytics tool for social analytics. People who use Facebook for their business can use this tool to make progress, engagement, and get insights into their business. It gives the user a lot of information about their follower count, likes, and comments on their posts or articles, among other things. There are two sorts of Facebook Insights, which are based on both users and interactions with the provided content.

 

 

5. 4Q by iPerceptions:

 

It is another free web analytics tool that is equally powerful and provides detailed insights. The idea behind 4Q is to figure out what visitors are doing on the website. Surveys are an effective method to gain valuable data from your customers' genuine experiences on your website. 

 

This tool provides short and simple surveys by asking questions like, “ What are my visitors at my website to do?”, “ Are they completing what they set out to do?”, or “  How satisfied are my visitors?”. This tool is one of the best free tools for understanding the voice of the customers. 

 

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6. ClickTale:

 

Now coming to paid tools, ClickTale provides a qualitative customer analysis that records all the activities of the visitors of the website. It employs Meta statistics to provide visual heat maps and reports on consumer activity, in addition to standard conversion analytics. 

 

As mentioned on the website of ClickTale, the first three months are free for any user opting for a paid plan, after that, it can cost them up to $990. One of the best features of this tool that makes it better than google analytics is that it provides descriptive information on where the users are spending more time on the website and if they are getting stuck in any part.

 

 

7. Optimizely:

 

Optimizely is a new and powerful web analytics tool that is mainly used for experimentation and testing. A/B testing is a simple approach to assess and enhance any website. As a business, one may conduct tests using the site's simple visual interface. 

 

The great thing about this tool is that users don't need any coding or programming experience to utilize it because the tools are simple to use. The users will need to pay $19-$399 per month to use Optimizely. 

 

(Also read: 7 Tools of Marketing Analytics)

 

Advantages of Web Analytics:

 

We have learned all about the best tools that are used for web analytics. But why do we use web analytics? Here are 5 benefits of web analytics as per the engaiodigital website:

 

1. Web analytics analyzes the traffic faced by the website at any certain period of time. It will categorize all sources of traffic and website conversions in an easy-to-understand manner. The firm using web analytics will realize which activities bring the greatest profit to the bottom line after analyzing the data given. It will also help the firm to keep track of the development of the organic and paid traffic.

2. Web analytics tracks the bounce rate of the website. In analytics, a person that visits a website but does not engage with it is said to have a high bounce rate. In this situation, the website is predicted to have low sales and leads. Tracking and enhancing the user experience, as well as ensuring that the material is what they desire, will reduce the bounce rate and enhance the website's profitability.

3. Web analytics pursue the target audience for any website, as for the marketing of any business, it is essential to find the right target audience. The appropriate marketing campaigns targeting the right audiences will boost sales, conversions, and improve the overall performance of a website.

4. Web analytics improves the Conversion Rate Optimization of any website. The objective of CRO is to get people to complete tasks that have been given to them. The conversion rate is computed by dividing the number of users by the number of objectives received. There are numerous conversions that a website should monitor, such as leads, newsletter sign-ups, registrations, and many more, and each business should measure the ones that are most essential to them.

5. Web Analytics manages the online advertisements given by businesses. The data shows us how many clicks, conversions, and how the ads were received by the target audience were generated by the online adverts. Efficient data collecting will boost the effectiveness of internet marketing.

 

Conclusion

 

Web analytics is a very powerful tool that one must use to improve their online business. Almost all the huge companies use web analytics to understand engagement and get insights on customer behavior. 

 

(Similar read: Marketing Analytics - An Overview)

 

In this article, we have discussed the basic definition of web analytics along with its working procedure, following it up with the top popular tools and advantages of web analytics.