Web Analytics

A SHORT INTRODUCTION

Web Analytics – What is it?

Gartner defines Web Analytics as

“A market of specialized analytic applications used to understand and improve online channeluser experience, visitor acquisition and actions, and to optimize digital marketing and advertisingcampaigns. Commercial products offer reporting, segmentation, analytical and performancemanagement, historical storage and integration with other data sources and processes. The toolsare used by marketing professionals, advertisers, content developers and the website’s operationsteam, and increasingly provide input to automated tools that target improved customerexperience”

A much simpler definition from Wikipedia

“Measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understandingand 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…

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Categories

Off-site Web Analytics

A measure 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 helpsidentify 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. Itmeasures 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

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Web analytics Technologies

Log file analysis

Web servers record request details in a log file. Log analyzer software read this file to statisticsof the website usage

It was helpful in the early days when websites were simple and consisted of mostly single pagehtml’s

The increasing complexity of the websites coupled with development in related web andnetwork technologies posed problems with form of measurement of websites popularity

Web caches where second and subsequent requests get served from caches, posed a criticalproblem to log file analysis techniques.

Page Tagging

Collects website data using third party data collection server. When a page is loaded, a Ajaxcomponent 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

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Why Web Analytics is 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

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The Eight Critical Web Metric

Metric Definition

VisitVisits report the fact that someone came to your website

and spent some time browsing before leaving

VisitorApproximation 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 SiteAlso called as session it’s the time spent on the site

during a visit

Bounce RateMeasures the percentage of sessions on your website

with only one page view

Exit RateA 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

EngagementThe degree to which the website engages its visitors. Its

defined as the no. of repeat visits by a visitor

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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

Products 8

And many more…

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.

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

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Parameters for Tool Selection

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

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Limitations of Web Analytics

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

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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.

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Thank you

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