Why do you need web analytics?
Web analytics help you understand what is happening on the site and how to improve it. The main purpose of web analytics is to collect and analyze data about site visitors in order to optimize or improve it. With the data on hand, you will be able to identify the weak points of the site, find out the audience and its needs, determine the tasks that the site should solve and draw up a plan to improve its effectiveness.
What tasks does web analytics solve?
- Evaluates traffic quality
- Identifies website flaws and technical errors
- Identifies effective advertising channels
- Reduces the cost of customer acquisition
- Draws up a portrait of visitors and a model of their behavior on the site
- Looking for ways to increase conversions
Basic methods of web analysis:
- Analysis of site traffic. The quality of traffic, the number of unique users, their activity are assessed, the reasons for the surge and decline in traffic are identified.
- Analysis of the target audience. Visitor demographics, geography, interests, devices and OS used).
- Usability analysis. Here scrolling and click maps, the most viewed pages, user routes on the site are studied.
- Analysis of technical gaps. Errors during the transition, the presence of duplicate pages, low loading speed, etc.).
- Analysis of traffic sources. What are the most effective channels for attracting users, the cost of attracting a visitor to the site, for what key phrases and on which pages users came, how to rationally distribute the budget of advertising campaigns.
- Analysis of e-commerce. The number of transactions, the most popular products, actions on the site, leads, calls, average bill, income, sales cycle.
- Analysis of competitors. What search phrases bring them traffic to the site, traffic sources, volume, benchmarking (comparison with the best competitors' products and global trends).
Next comes the modification and retrospective. It is necessary to understand which recommendations and hypotheses turned out to be correct, which did not bring the expected result and what should be taken into account in the future.
All site analytics can be divided into several levels.
The initial level is the collection of basic statistical data (number of visits, depth of views, time spent on the site, transitions from advertising campaigns, refusals, click maps, scrolling).
Business analytics - calculating and analyzing targeted actions on the site, calls, sales, average receipts. Here we get the answer to the question: how much profit does the site bring and how to increase it.
Analytics based on CLV (customer lifetime value) allows you to determine the value of a customer (profit received from cooperation), identify regular customers and develop strategies for their retention, find out the channels through which they came to the site, and draw up a more detailed portrait of their customers. Such analytics help to better understand the behavior of the audience and the mechanism of making decisions about the purchase (whether the message on the site about free shipping, the section with personal recommendations, etc.). In addition, this data will help you make a profit forecast, reallocate your budget and plan effective advertising campaigns.
Truly good web analytics don't exist in isolation. It is closely related to other systems: advertising systems, accounting systems, CRM, call tracking. To conduct a full business analysis, you need to collect data from all of these systems.