Web analytics is critical to the success of your digital strategy: by collecting and processing data, it allows you to understand how your users behave online and thus achieve your marketing goals.
Let's face it: in this day and age, whatever business you're in, not having an online presence is tantamount to self-sabotage.
You understand what I mean, don't you?
The Internet is within everyone's reach, anyone has a social media profile, and it is more than normal to shop online...
But before you think of any strategy to promote yourself on the Web, the first key thing do you know?
Having your website!
It is your "home" or virtual store, where you host your audience, talk about yourself, share content (e.g. in a blog), promote your products and services... with the goal of making yourself known and thus increasing demand for your offerings. This is the first step in growing your digital business.
But that's not enough: you also have to figure out if this works. Let me explain: it is useless to have an Internet page if no one finds it or reads it; just as it is useless if your content does not produce conversions (i.e., if your visitors do not leave their contact or become paying customers).
Am I right?
In other words, if you want to get results, you have to collect, study, and interpret the right data.
That's why today I want to tell you about the Web Analytics.
Don't let the term fool you: it is something much simpler than you think!
It has to do with one of the biggest advantages that digital marketing offers, which is that online everything can be measured and monitored.
In past articles I have already told you about the KPI, performance indicators, including, for example, the impressions or of the CPM, useful for understanding the effectiveness of some of your digital strategies.
With Web Analytics, the goal is to analyze what's happening on your Web site so you know what's working and what's not and point you in the right direction. It's a powerful resource: by monitoring how potential customers interact, you can adjust your strategy to increase sales, clicks and conversions.
Again, this involves dealing with metrics and numbers, but don't worry: you don't need to be Einstein to pull it off 😉
Read on: you will understand What it is and why you should consider it in your online business strategy.
What is Web Analytics?
Let's start with the official definition of the Digital Analytics Association (DAA) - Formerly the Web Analytics Association: web analytics is "the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purpose of understanding and optimizing Web usage".
Okay, so let's try to talk ground to ground.
Web analytics allows you to understand How people interact with your website through their behavior and activities. It is a process of collecting, processing and analyzing digital data, that is, all that information about users who visit your page.
You can get it through various tools and platforms, which measure various metrics, such as how many people visit the site, how long they stay, how many and what pages they open, whether and what actions they take, and whether they arrive by following a particular link or not.
It is not only a matter of collecting a set of numbers, but also of knowing which ones to use and for what; the goal is to optimize the use of your site by measuring and comparing performance, to optimize recruitment, interaction and conversion efforts internally, and thus build customer loyalty, attract more visitors and stimulate purchase.
Why do Web Analytics?
As we said at the beginning, a website is vital for any business.
The mistake, however, is to think that creating a great site and offering an extraordinary service or product is enough to keep customers coming. But often people do not behave exactly as expected.
That's why, in order to consistently improve the results you get from it (whether it's increased traffic, conversions, downloads, or whatever), you need to knowing what works and what doesn't, trying to understand what goes on "behind the scenes."
Web analytics allows you to do just that: get the picture, effectively, to make decisions based on objective, hard data. That's because it gives you insight into how your users' online experience is performing and, consequently, how you can improve or change it according to your goals.
Having numbers, data and information about the behavior of your target audience and the performance of your strategies allows you to make the best decisions For the growth of your business.
What can you achieve with Web Analytics? Here are basically the advantages:
- Evaluate, in real time, the performance of your site;
- Create a better experience for your users;
- Optimize the site for key conversion metrics;
- Monitor the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns;
- Making informed and targeted investments;
- Increase site and e-commerce ROIs;
- Maximizing profits.
How does Web Analytics work?
Doing Web Analytics means identifying specific metrics that measure the performance of your site: the idea is to define some key performance indicators, to keep track of interactions and optimize them.
Of all the numerical information that helps you understand where your users are coming from and how they interact with your site, here is a list of the main ones:
- Landing pages: are the absolute first pages a user visits, thanks to which the site was found; it could be the Home Page or a blog article.
- Sources of acquisition: knowing where interested users are coming from will help you understand which marketing investments (SEO, Google Ads, Facebook,...) are generating results and which are not.
- SEO Ranking: tells you how your site ranks in search engine results.
- Page views: is the total number of times a page has been viewed on your site;
- Sessions: a session indicates all the actions performed on the site by an individual user in a specific time frame,
- Type of users: they may be new or returning;
- Web traffic: the number of incoming and outgoing site visitors in a given time period;
- Bounce Rate: the percentage of visitors who leave the site quickly without interacting;
- Dwell time: indicates how much time a user spends on average on the pages of the site.
- Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors who make purchases, sign up for newsletters or another service; these are the actions you want users to take on your site and usually match your online business goals.
All this is possible thanks to various tools, of which the most widely used is definitely Google Analytics: a free web analytics platform that provides you with various statistics so you can see if your digital marketing strategy is working. Simply translated: Google Analytics shows you a variety of data related to the categories I just listed above, with the purpose of letting you understand if your site is achieving online success - so you can find out if you are on the right track or need to reverse course and change your marketing strategy.
Conclusion
Web Analytics is an indispensable step in digital marketing and the starting point for building a successful business: it empowers you to make informed decisions to promote your business online and get real results.
It is obvious that numbers in themselves leave time to be found: you must also be able to read them, process them, and then make the best use of them to achieve the goals you have set for yourself.
In the next article, we will talk about How to set up a web analytics process and what best practices to follow To make the most of this fantastic tool.
Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash