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Table of Contents
• Types of Website Analytics
• Web Analytics Metrics
• What Tasks Can Be Solved Using Web Analytics
• Web Analytics Tools
Web analytics of a website is the process of viewing and studying statistical data on website visits and visitors in order to improve and optimize the operation of the resource and the advertising campaigns being conducted.
The information obtained allows you to determine the target audience of the site and its behavioral characteristics, which in turn makes it possible to make informed decisions on the development of the site, content improvement, and optimization of commercial offerings. Web analysis also shows the characteristics of traffic: its type, source, etc. Based on this data, advertising campaigns, their budgets, and the most effective advertising channels and platforms are optimized.
Professional web analytics is a process that has many subtleties and nuances unique to each online project. It allows you to understand how effective a particular advertising campaign, announcement, and what promotion strategies are worth using. And, most importantly, all this can be identified for each segment of the audience.
Thus, by analyzing website visits, you can select the most effective strategies for each category of potential customers.
Types of Website Analytics
Comprehensive analytics. This involves conducting statistical research. For a comprehensive study of a web resource, you can use both generalized information about the web resource and detailed data on each individual page.
Counters are used for analytics, which collect detailed information about visits. If their capabilities are not enough, log-analyzers are used - systems that read information from log files created by the server.
With the help of comprehensive analytics, webmasters receive complete information about the site's operation and traffic flow. This makes it possible to solve many problems, ranging from the reasons for low attendance and low positions in search results to the reasons for low conversion.
Cross-analytics. It consists in studying the full path of the client, starting from the advertisement through which the transition was made, and ending with the target action (purchase, repeat purchase, subscription, form filling, etc.). For this, the statistics of the channels and platforms used, advertising campaigns and announcements, behavioral characteristics of visitors and their interaction with various elements of the site are studied. Cross-web analytics allows you to find the most effective points of contact with the client and levers of influence on him, as well as determine the advertising channels, platforms, announcements and strategies.
Web Analytics Metrics
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Time spent on the site.
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Depth of views (i.e., how many pages the user has viewed).
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Transitions between site pages.
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Behavioral characteristics of users (for example, their reaction to a pop-up message or offer).
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Geography of visitors.
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Demographic and social characteristics of visitors.
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Source of transition (from which site, by which advertisement, query, etc.).
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Completion of target actions (for example, button clicks or page visits), etc.
Web analytics plays a huge role in business. Without periodic analysis and viewing of statistics, it is impossible to further successfully develop a project. Each analytical cycle (at least once a quarter) allows you to identify shortcomings, point to the strengths of the web resource and the advertising campaign being conducted, and also helps to make further decisions. In other words, web analytics is the foundation on which the webmaster relies to make further decisions.
What Tasks Can Be Solved Using Web Analytics
Identifying the target audience. If the project is young and the exact portrait of the potential client has not yet been drawn up, the data obtained using web analysis will help in this. By studying the interests, demographic and social characteristics of existing clients and their behavior on the network, you will be able to more accurately understand and create the right portrait of your target audience.
Narrow segmentation of the audience. Statistics and analysis allow you to segment the audience by different criteria. For example, by average check. Having studied the characteristics of each segment, you will be able to select the most effective ads, make a higher quality and individual offer for each category of people.
Optimization of the advertising budget. No company has unlimited resources. Everyone wants to save where possible. Studying and analyzing data on advertising campaigns will allow you to identify the most effective platforms and strategies and abandon ineffective impressions that are wasting the budget.
Content optimization. By studying traffic and sources of transitions, you can understand whether the content of the site pages corresponds to what the user was looking for, what needs the target audience has and what it is looking for. Based on these data, the content on the site, as well as the unique selling proposition (USP), are optimized.
Selection of optimal strategies. Studying analytical and statistical data allows you to find and use the most effective strategies for displaying, promoting and advertising.
Web Analytics Tools &
Google Analytics
All tools and services for web analytics can be divided into two types:
a) those
using log-analyzers. They allow you to collect statistical data on visits and visitors without making changes to the web resource. All information about visits is stored on the server in special log files, which are created by the server itself. And the log-analyzer programs read this information. This allows companies to create personalized web analytics systems, adapting them to their project;
b) those
using counters. If the company does not have its own server, you can use the second type of tools - counters. To use them, you need to make changes to the structure of the site, namely, write a small code, after which the counter will start recording all information about transitions. Counters do not allow creating your own analysis systems, but this is not necessary. The functionality of tools using counters is quite enough for full and high-quality site analytics. In addition, they allow you to get statistics even for cached pages, which log-analyzers cannot do.
Today, the most common are services that use counters. Among the most well-known are:
Google Analytics;
Yandex.Metrica;
OpenStats;
Piwik;
Adobe Analytics, etc.
Most experienced webmasters use not one, but several web analytics tools at once to get more accurate statistics and more data.
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