Web analytics an intro

Web analytics an intro

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  Web Analytics A SHORTINTRODUCTION
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  Web Analytics –What is it? Gartner defines Web Analytics as “A market of specialized analytic applications used to understand and improve online channel user experience, visitor acquisition and actions, and to optimize digital marketing and advertising campaigns. Commercial products offer reporting, segmentation, analytical and performance management, historical storage and integration with other data sources and processes. The tools are used by marketing professionals, advertisers, content developers and the website’s operations team, and increasingly provide input to automated tools that target improved customer experience” A much simpler definition from Wikipedia “Measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage” Simply put it’s a tool for measuring traffic to improve the effectiveness of a web site  Helps in effectively carrying out business and market research  Helps measure the results of advertising campaigns  Helps estimate traffic changes on launch of new advertisement campaign  Helps gauge traffic and popularity trends Web Analytics helps you track every click of every person on your site… 2
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  Categories Off-site Web Analytics Ameasure of web sites opportunity (potential audience), visibility (share) and buzz (comments) that’s happening on the whole irrespective of whether or not you own the website.  Provides insight on where competitors advertise, how better position a website and helps identify new marketing initiatives  Tools like Google Insight for Search, and Compete.com provide off-site analytics data On-site Web Analytics Measure of visitors behavior on a website. It tracks the visitors journey through the website. It measures the performance of the website in commercial context.  Data from on-site web analytics is typically compared against key performance indicators. Helps derive for example how different landing pages are associated with online purchases.  Google Analytics is the most widely used on-site web analytics service This deck provides details of the on-site web analytics techniques and tools 3
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  Web analytics Technologies Logfile analysis  Web servers record request details in a log file. Log analyzer software read this file to statistics of the website usage  It was helpful in the early days when websites were simple and consisted of mostly single page html’s  The increasing complexity of the websites coupled with development in related web and network technologies posed problems with form of measurement of websites popularity  Web caches where second and subsequent requests get served from caches, posed a critical problem to log file analysis techniques. Page Tagging  Collects website data using third party data collection server. When a page is loaded, a Ajax component on the page passes on data about the client to the server  Since its JavaScript based, it can be used for any events – click, focus, blur, mouse over, etc.  Even activities on pages that are cached can be tracked  Page tagging method has become a standard in web analytics A majority of web analytics solutions uses Page Tagging approach 4
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  Why Web Analyticsis essential  It provides the ability to capture, track over time and report on the behavior of visitors to the website. Without this data it is difficult to improve the website  It helps in tracking website key engagement metrics like no. of pages per visit, average time spent on site, return visitors vs. new visitors, etc.  Provides overview of different sources of traffic. A view of the direct traffic vs. referral traffic vs. search engine traffic  Provides details on the geographic distribution of the visitor. Helps identify potential regions that are currently under covered or not served by the business  Helps understand which content is viewed most often and which content is viewed least often  Measure impact of multi-channel marketing – how a television commercial on a certain date drive traffic to the website  Helps define and track sales funnels. For example, email signup, contract request submission can provide leads for sales which can be tracked.  It provides the ability to track and measure top referring sites  Provides details on the visitor’s browser segmentation  Provides details on which search engines are driving the most visits 5
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  The Eight CriticalWeb Metric Metric Definition Visit Visits report the fact that someone came to your website and spent some time browsing before leaving Visitor Approximation of the number of people who come to your website. Time on Page The time that the visitors spend on an individual page Time on Site Also called as session it’s the time spent on the site during a visit Bounce Rate Measures the percentage of sessions on your website with only one page view Exit Rate A measure of how many visitors left the website from a certain page Conversion Rate Is the ratio of outcomes to the no. of visitors or visits Engagement The degree to which the website engages its visitors. Its defined as the no. of repeat visits by a visitor 6
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  Metrics - No.of visits to purchase, No. of days to purchase Helps understand customer behavior, optimize how each item are sold, how to advertise and market them, and even helps optimize inventory Metrics - Site Overlay Report Shows how people browse the website, which methods are working and which are not on the website Metrics - Top Entry Pages, keywords, Bounce Identifies which of the multiple site entries are not resulting in sale, which keyword searches does not produce relevant results Metrics – Traffic sources – Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, Search Engines Shows where the visitors are coming from , effectiveness of marketing and provides direction on where to spend on marketing Metrics - Visits, Bounce Rate, Page Views, Pages/Visit, Avg. Time on Site, and % New Visits Indicates how the website is performing on the surface and its trend Web Analytics - Usage 7 Basic Health Check Visitor Acquisition Top Entry Pages, keywords, Bounce Click Density Analysis Visits to Purchase
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  Products 8 And manymore…
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  Key Products &Features 9 Google Analytics Free, Easy to use, User-friendly dashboards Provides features for targeted ads, track sales, track goal conversions, see what site variant generates the most revenue, track specific campaigns and transactions Provides tools to understand the customer and what they are searching for. Also has paid program for larger and more complicated websites Adobe SiteCatalyst Quickly identify the most profitable paths through the website. Most concise segmentation through real-time visitor information Automatically scan a website for opportunities to improve tag structure, links and keywords to optimize site health Provide insight about the best channels to expose customers to products WebTrends One of the founding companies in the web analytics industry. Has created important and lasting relationships with huge retailers and companies around the world. Offer comparative data and information on other companies in the same or similar business so companies can compare themselves to others. CoreMetrics In addition to other features, provides impression monitoring. An advertisement showing up on a page is counted as an impression and used to count the no. of times a visitor saw an ad before actually clicking on it. Allows import of legacy data from other web analytics tool to be used in historical reports. Offers a pay per click (PPC) campaign management tool that allows to keep track of ads, keywords, and landing pages from one convenient console.
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  Web Analytics –Generic Architecture How it works  When the visitor browses the website, the page contains the code snippet to download a JavaScript.  This JavaScript has tracks user activity and sends data to the analytics server on various events  The analytics server stores the data which are then processed  The processed data is stored typically in a database  Analytics reports gets served from this database 10
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  Parameters for ToolSelection  Why not a free tool. Tools like Piwik, Google Analytics, Mixpanel are offered free for limited usage. What limitations does a free tool pose  Total cost of ownership  Metrics needed  Data democratization - Metrics and dashboards for different people, User management, Training  Ease of use  Options for exporting data  Training and consulting  Access to knowledge base and type of support  Advanced features - Mobile analytics, Social analytics, Cost data import, Attribution modeling, Advanced segmentation, A/B Testing, Real time features  Future roadmap of the tool  Reasons for lost business for the tool 11
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  Limitations of WebAnalytics  Third party cookies – A majority of the web analytics vendors use third party cookies (that are sent from vendors domain and not from the domain of the website being browsed). This allows tracking of user across other sites as well. This leads to privacy concern and some users (though in minority now) block third party cookies  Cookie deletion – User at anytime can delete the cookies. Web analytics tools use this cookie to identity unique visitors. The user will look to be a first time visitor if he/she deletes the cookies.  Network and security limitation – There could be limitations from private networks that prevent site data to go to third parties. The service provider and in some cases the countries may also impose such restrictions.  Data accuracy – Due to the above factors the data gathered may not be accurate. Also the methods used in web analytics is prone to manipulation. Data from the web analytics should be considered as approximate data and never be trusted to be accurate 12
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  Competition Analysis Techniques Toolbar Data – Toolbars in browsers collect limited data about browsing and keyword used by the user. This data can be used for gathering competitive intelligence  Panel Data – Sampling based on panel members who install the monitoring software which collects data sends it to a central server for reporting  ISP Data – The internet service providers collects data from all the users it services which can be analyzed  Search Engine Data – the search engines are providing tools to mine their search behavior data which can be used for search data analysis  Benchmarks from Web Analytics Vendors – Web analytics vendors aggregate multiple vendor data and publish benchmarks which can be used to compare against industry segment  Self Reported Data – Some websites publicize their own data which can be leveraged for competition analysis  Web Traffic Analysis – Tools like Google trends provide data on web traffic which can be used to compare against competition and industry segment  Overlap and Opportunities – Also visited data from Google trends provides insight on the biggest competitor and where to place advertisements  Referrals and Destinations – Study of the referring sites for the competitor website. 13
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  Thank you 14