Tools for Web Analytics

You have to be careful when engaging in web analytics not to get caught up in all the numbers and statistics and lose sight of the real goal. You want the data required to make effective adjustments to your website, and to develop online marketing strategies to increase your ROI. What is the point of using web analytics for charts and reports but not to make adjustments to improve your site’s performance?

Every analysis should be followed up with an ACTION.

Are site visitors are abandoning a sale during a particular step in your site’s checkout process? You need to eliminate or streamline that step to make the customer comfortable and safe.

Is a specific e-mail campaign generating a lot of traffic to the landing page, but very few sales/conversions? You should look for ways to improve the campaign landing page and/or e-mail content to increase your conversions.

Do you have too many different PPC campaigns producing conflicting results? You might want to pare down or try to improve less effective campaigns and expand and continue your more effective campaigns.

Always be measuring your site’s ROI. You must have TRACKABLE goals/conversions for your site; so assign a value to each goal/conversion, utilize analytics to track the number of conversions and the associated source, compare the cost of each traffic source against the total conversions/benefit generated by that source, and finally, use this ROI data to make adjustments to your site and online marketing strategy.

You can use web analytics log analyzers which sift through the log files that your site generates automatically to produce reports and charts. Alternately you can add some code to each page of your site you want to track, including tags that will send information to a database/server which uses the data for generating analytics reports.

Basic statistics will include number of visitors, referral, search term, entry and exit pages, hourly traffic, and basic geographic information. More detailed information should include visitor paths, returning visitors, browser data, operating system, and IP. Even more advanced analytics solutions can allow you to track conversions, goals, revenue, expenses, etc.

You have to look hard at your needs and find a tool that’s good match. This is why it is so important to first establish your goals and then find the best tool to help you maximize your ROI. A good analytics program is always worth it as long as you choose the right tools for the job!