Web Analytics

Web analytics is a key component of digital marketing and website optimization. It involves the analysis of internet users’ behaviour and serves these important objectives:

• Monitor the health of a website. This involves tracking and measuring web traffic to assess performance against benchmarks and metrics.
• Improve the effectiveness of a website in terms of conversion rates and other performance parameters through controlled website tests.
• Improve the effectiveness of elements of the marketing mix. For example, digital marketing campaigns.

Web analytics tools use information from logs, cookies, and page tagging processes to segment site visitors and track their progress through the prospecting funnel, from leads to enquiries, enquiries to prospects, and prospects to customers. They track conversion rates at each stage of the funnel to identify areas for improvement.

Google Analytics, Exhibit 27.1, is the most widely used web analytics Google Analytics, Exhibit 27.1, is the most widely used web analytics platform, but there are other popular tools, including Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel, Matomo, Glassbox, StatCounter, Kissmetrics Analyze, and IBM Watson Consumer Experience Analytics.

Web analytics is an ongoing cycle of improvement that comprises the following steps:

• Data Collection — via Server (Web) Logs, Page Tagging, Authentication Systems and other methods.
• Data Processing — to compute Metrics.
• Reporting — Analysis and Visualization of the results.
• Benchmarking and Competitive Intelligence — data is compared against industry standards and competitors.
• Optimizing — to make improvements to the website and marketing campaigns.

This chapter provides a detailed overview of each of these steps and how they contribute to the overall web analytics process. By understanding the web analytics process and the application of web analytics, businesses can make data-driven decisions to improve their website’s performance and achieve their marketing objectives.