Loading ...Web Analytics and Its Role in the Success of Online Marketing Campaigns
This article is part of a series of twenty articles. Click to read: The Top 20 Web Marketing Concepts Your Next Website Design Company Should Know
Web analytics is a detailed method of tracking your website visitors and store statistics related to their actions. When analytics is installed and functioning correctly, every single action that happens on your website is stored and categorized to a database. Analytics can tell you:
- The total number of visitors you’ve had to your website over a select period of time
- Where they came from, including sources such as paid search, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- What they did while on your website, what pages they visited
- If they filled out any forms or purchased any products
- How much time they spent on the website before moving on
- And much more…
Analytics is an important aspect of online marketing and website optimization. During an ongoing internet marketing campaign, web analytics help you understand what’s going right and also identifies problems you should work to correct. The four most important benefits of web analytics are as follows:
- Enhances the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns
- Measures increases or decreases in web traffic based on current activities
- Increases user/visitor/customer engagement
- Identifies areas on your website needing improvement
Web Analytics Tools
There are many different analytics tools available with different feature sets to track and measure your website activity. Some of the most popular web analytics tools:
- Google Analytics – Easily the most popular and feature-rich web analytics product available. This free and simple to use tool generates high-end statistics related to website visitors. Google Analytics tracks the activities of users on your website, information related to SEO and SEM campaigns, and social media interactions.
- Compete.com – Popular for listing the top one million websites over the Internet, Compete.com offers creative intelligence over its competitors, and click tendency of visitors on your website. Users can also track which keywords are driving traffic to both your website and your competitor’s websites.
- Alexa.com – Alexa is the leading provider of free, global web metrics and provides analytics for competitive analysis, benchmarking, market research, or business development.
- Webalizer – Webalizer is a simple analytics tools installed on many web servers around the world, Webalizer tracks basic visitor data.
- Facebook Insights – Facebook Insights provides Facebook page owners with usage statistics based on their published content.
Two Real-World Examples of the Benefits of Web Analytics with Google Adwords
Spend less money on paid internet ads:
Do you spend money on ads via Facebook or Google that send customers to lead-generating forms on your website? Analytics makes it possible to track:
- The total number of visitors that came to your website as a result of paid advertisements, and as a result, your total cost per visit. If you spent $600 on ads in a month and had 300 unique visitors you would know that you spent, on average, $2 per visit.
- How many visitors completed your lead-generating form and how much each lead costs to generate. If, of those 300 visitors for $600, 30 completed the form you would know that it cost you, on average, $20 per lead.
- What visitors who did not complete the form searched for and where they came from.
- What visitors who did complete the form searched for and where they came from.
Using all of this data it is possible to identify visitors who are least likely to be good leads based on where they come from and what they search for. You can use that data to stop spending on certain ads and increase spending on others. You can also use it to identify parts of your website that can be improved to further appeal to current non-converting visitors.
Increase website store sales:
Are you selling products via an online store on your website? Analytics allows you to track each visitor through the entire shopping process. It can tell you:
- How many people visited your store
- How many of those visitors purchased a product
- If visitors leave while shopping, what page they were on when they left
- If they left in the middle of the checkout process without completing the sale, what page were they viewing last before they left
This type of analytics data allows you to improve pages or issues that are causing customers to leave before finalizing the purchase, and improve checkout pages that may be confusing or inoperable for your customers. It also helps you identify ways to make the online shopping process more pleasing for your customers which results in more sales. In the case of traffic sources, analytics allows you find out where your best customers came from so you can increase marketing efforts in those areas.
There are many, many more ways than the few demonstrated here to use analytics for improved advertising results. By keeping on top of periodic web statistics and reports, you can track ROI and make informed decisions. By using web analytics strategically you can greatly improve your conversion rate, allowing you to ultimately maximize your marketing efforts while minimizing cost. And, unlike other type of advertising, with analytics there is never a need to wonder if the money you’ve spent has resulting in any visitors or sales.
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Tags: Google analytics, improving advertising results, increase marketing efforts, internet marketing campaign, maximize your marketing efforts, Online Marketing, online marketing campaign, success of online marketing campaign, Web analytics, web analytics role, web statistics, website optimization
