Table Of Contents
- What Is Web Analytics?
- Things You Need to Know About Web Analytics
- 1. Web Analytics Can Help Your Business
- 2. Data Is Different From Information
- 3. Web Analytics Doesn?t Share Personally Identifiable Information
- 4. Dashboards Can Be Misleading
- 5. Don?t Depend on Site Traffic Alone
- 6. Understand Your Objective
- 7. Customer Segmentation Is Essential
- 8. Filtering and Grouping Can Help
- 9. Customers Can Be Part of the Process
- Use Web Analytics to Take Your Business to the Next Level
9 Must-Know Facts About Web Analytics
Last Updated on: November 7th, 2024
The global web analytics market size is expected to grow to $7.05 billion by 2026, up from 3.01 billion in 2020. This impressive growth is spurred primarily by the steady rise in both online shopping and marketing automation.
Despite the increasing awareness of the importance of effectively utilizing large chunks of random web data, many web analytics still struggle to understand what customers do on websites. For instance, most have no idea why customers leave a business site without converting.
If you?re still in the dark about web analytics, you?ve come to the right place. In this guide, we provide all the information on web analytics you need to make the right decisions.
What Is Web Analytics?
Before digging into facts about web analytics and why it is important, it helps to understand what exactly web analytics is. Web analytics is a process where website data is collected, analyzed, and reported with the aim of understanding user behavior and optimizing performance.
Different analytics tools are used to collect this web data. These tools track what happens on a certain website, such as:
- The number of users who come to the website
- Where these users come from
- Which places they visit after landing
- The number of users who purchase something from the site
- How much money they spend
The data collected can prove highly beneficial when making business decisions.
Things You Need to Know About Web Analytics
Now that you understand what web analytics is, it?s time to look at some key web analytic facts that every business with a website should know. Let?s get right into it.
1. Web Analytics Can Help Your Business
If you?re going to be putting company resources on web analytics, then the first thing you want to know is whether it?s worth it. The truth is web analytics is worth its weight in gold.
With web analytics, you can easily analyze different key performance indicators (KPIs) that help drive your business. For instance, you can monitor your site?s traffic sources, including which frequent keywords, referral sites, and search engines bring you the most traffic. This data helps you know where you should focus your time, efforts, and money on.
2. Data Is Different From Information
Some web analytics confuse data with information. What?s the difference?
Data refers to a seemingly unconnected set of values and numbers. On the other hand, information offers context around the data. Further, information groups or labels the content.
After getting data, you need to organize it so it enables you to make decisions based on what you can see.
3. Web Analytics Doesn?t Share Personally Identifiable Information
Due to privacy concerns, personally identifiable information isn?t part of web analytics information. For instance, a web user?s IP address is removed from the end user?s view. Some web analytics go further to protect users? privacy by banning the integration of analytics data with personally identifiable information in any application, whether online or offline.
4. Dashboards Can Be Misleading
Regardless of the web analytics dashboard you use, it?s unlikely that you?ll get all the data you need. The essential thing is for the dashboard to contain the key metrics. More importantly, these metrics must be tied back to revenue where possible.
Without this essential piece of information, it?s difficult to determine the tactics you?re using that are actually effective.
5. Don?t Depend on Site Traffic Alone
Sure, your site traffic may make a massive jump from two months ago, but that information alone is not enough for you to know the true value of this increase.
Analyze the data, asking yourself such important questions as:
- Does this always happen during this season?
- Is your competition also experiencing an increase in site traffic?
- Did this surge in site traffic make your business money?
6. Understand Your Objective
Everything you measure must always be tied back to your overall business objectives. That?s why you must have a clear business plan and company mantra.
Is your goal conversion? If so, identify your customer?s intent whenever they?re using your website.
Without a specific conversion goal, it?s hardly possible to separate data based on the various actions users take through your site.
7. Customer Segmentation Is Essential
If you measure the total number of visitors, that information does little to help you. You need to be segmenting customers based on habits and other identifying features.
Customer segmentation allows you to create subsets or groups. Moreover, it allows for the testing of goals and conversion rates against different visitor subsets.
8. Filtering and Grouping Can Help
There isn?t a single web analytics platform that?s perfect. That?s you?ll always need to do some level of filtering.
Filtering is essential when it comes to cleaning up any data integrity problems. More than that, filtering can help you move the first ten or fifty entries.
Grouping can also prove helpful. For instance, it can help you simplify granular data, besides building complex segments.
9. Customers Can Be Part of the Process
Web analytics is not easy. However, getting closer to your clients can help you understand what truly interests them.
For instance, do the majority of your clients prefer desktop or mobile. The answers to such questions can prove beneficial when making marketing decisions.
Use Web Analytics to Take Your Business to the Next Level
In today?s competitive business space, businesses with access to data have an edge. That?s why you need to be investing in web analytics. It?s one of the best ways to see how your consumers are behaving when they visit your business website and leverage that data to your advantage.
Would you like to learn more about how web analytics can help your business? Please, keep browsing our blog.
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