Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research and assess and improve website effectiveness. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print or broadcast advertising campaigns. It can be used to estimate how traffic to a website changes after launching a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views, or creates user behaviour profiles. It helps gauge traffic and popularity trends, which is useful for market research.
Basic steps of the web analytics process
Most web analytics processes come down to four essential stages or steps, which are:
Collection of data: This stage is the collection of the basic, elementary data. Usually, these data are counts of things. The objective of this stage is to gather the data. Processing of data into metrics: This stage usually takes counts and makes them ratios, although there still may be some counts. The objective of this stage is to take the data and conform it into information, specifically metrics. Developing KPI: This stage focuses on using the ratios (and counts) and infusing them with business strategies, referred to as key performance indicators (KPI). Many times, KPIs deal with conversion aspects, but not always. It depends on the organization. Formulating online strategy: This stage is concerned with the online goals, objectives, and standards for the organization or business. These strategies are usually related to making a profit, saving money, or increasing market share. Another essential function developed by the analysts for the optimization of the websites is the experiments:
Experiments and testing: A/B testing is a controlled experiment with two variants, in online settings, such as web development. The goal of A/B testing is to identify and suggest changes to web pages that increase or maximize the effect of a statistically tested result of interest. Each stage impacts or can impact (i.e., drives) the stage preceding or following it. So, sometimes the data that is available for collection impacts the online strategy. Other times, the online strategy affects the data collected.
Web analytics categories There are at least two categories of web analytics, off-site and on-site web analytics.
Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and analysis regardless of whether a person owns or maintains a website. It includes the measurement of a website's potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole. On-site web analytics, the more common of the two, measures a visitor's behaviour once on a specific website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, the degree to which different landing pages are associated with online purchases. On-site web analytics measures the performance of a specific website in a commercial context. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance and is used to improve a website or marketing campaign's audience response. Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics are the most widely used on-site web analytics service; although new tools are emerging that provide additional layers of information, including heat maps and session replay. In the past, web analytics has been used to refer to on-site visitor measurement. However, this meaning has become blurred, mainly because vendors are producing tools that span both categories. Many different vendors provide on-site web analytics software and services. There are two main technical ways of collecting the data. The first and traditional method, server log file analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records file requests by browsers. The second method, page tagging, uses JavaScript embedded in the webpage to make image requests to a third-party analytics-dedicated server, whenever a webpage is rendered by a web browser or, if desired, when a mouse click occurs. Both collect data that can be processed to produce web traffic reports.
On-site web analytics There are no globally agreed definitions within web analytics as the industry bodies have been trying to agree on definitions that are useful and definitive for some time, that is to say, metrics in tools and products from different companies may have different ways of measuring and counting. As a result, the same metric name may represent the different meaning of data. The main bodies who have had input in this area have been the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), JICWEBS (The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards in the UK and Ireland), and The DAA (Digital Analytics Association), formally known as the WAA (Web Analytics Association, US). However, many terms are used in consistent ways from one major analytics tool to another, so the following list, based on those conventions, can be a useful starting point:
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