What is Web
Analytics?
Web analytics is essentially about monitoring how visitors are
using different pages and features on your website - for example,
how many people read the top articles on an online newspaper or
view different products on a retailer's site?
This information (known in the trade as clickstream data) can
then be combined with other customer intelligence you have gathered
to tweak not only your website, but also other forms of marketing
such as online advertising or discount campaigns. At a basic level,
it's the internet equivalent of how major retailers and
supermarkets track your movement around stores so they can learn
where best to position products in order to maximise sales.
What are the most popular tools
and how much do they cost?
Web analytics has become much more widely available to smaller
organisations through the launch of free measurement tools. In
particular, the release of Google Analytics in 2005 has greatly
increased awareness of analytics among small to medium enterprises
(SMEs). Around 32% of the Top 500 Web Sites use Google Analytics! The
bigger players include Omniture, who were recently acquired by Adobe,
Webtrends,
Clicktracks, Coremetrics
etc...
As a rule of thumb, hosted solutions are where
most businesses will start, but for bigger companies where the web
plays a more serious role, the licensed route
might be a better fit. So, in terms of broad costs, Hosted
solutions: range from Free up to £30,000 per year and
Top-end solutions: range from £50,000 per year
upwards.
Before deciding how much to spend on a web analytics solution
and pulling out your wallet, why not consider the
following process: Implement a Free Tool > Learn >
Upgrade Analytics Skills > Fix Data Capture > Evaluate >
Now Choose? This will help your decision making and your ability to
identify the most suitable tool for you to use.
What can I
measure?
You can measure all kinds of different things, but the reality
is that you don't want to be overloaded with data. Like Einstein
said: "Not everything that can be counted counts." With that in
mind it is best to identify the key metrics that matter to your
business. Some of the most popular metrics include:
- Number of unique visitors
- Most popular pages
- Entry pages
- Exit pages
- Page / site bounce rates
- Conversion rates
- Where visitors came from
- Search Engine keyword analysis
- Search Engine referrals
- Visit length per particular page / entire site
- Browser stats
- System stats (monitor resolution, operating system etc)
We'll run a post next month on some key metrics and their
definitions.
Vendor selection - what to
consider?
In order to identify the right web analytics supplier it is
important to understand that different companies have different
approaches and technologies. As well as price, important criteria
when selecting a web analytics vendor include:
- Type of model (i.e. licence or ASP)
- Ease of use and functionality
- Customer profiling ability
- Integration capability
- Reporting and quality of support
- Training and consultancy
Some excellent resources &
blogs to use