Web Site Analytics
There are few marketing methods that allow you to track user behavior or see what a user has read. Can you imagine being able to tell some of these things with traditional print advertising methods? Let’s say that you sent a printed catalog out to perspective customers. On a report you could see that 1,398 people looked at page 37, while 2,633 people viewed page 44. What if you also could know that on May 23rd, 479 people viewed your catalog and that they spent an average of 3 minutes, 37 seconds each looking at it? Web site analytics software lets us do that and more.
Web site analytics software allows us to record and report useful marketing information about your web site. Web site tracking, as it is sometimes referred, is critical on e-commerce sites so that you can see what to adjust. You know if you have an e-commerce site and you are selling a ton of products a, b, m and r that those pages are being found. If you are not selling products d, g, k and z – Why aren’t you? Web site analytics reporting can help you investigate so that you can sell more. Web site analytics reporting can lead directly to sales, if you take the time to analyze the reports and act on the information.
What Will Web Site Analytics Reports Show?
Web site reporting can show a lot of useful information. We won’t cover it all, but here is an overview. Keep in mind that the reporting happens day after day, and you can see how traffic has improved over days, months and years. Keep in mind that reports are not 100% accurate. It is sometimes hard for analytics programs to determine a new user over a returning user because at this time the reporting software looks at the IP address to determine the new versus returning users. Some users have dynamically generated IP addresses that change from session to session. The same user might appear as a new user every time they visit your site because the IP address on their network changes. We’re usually looking for general trends and percentages so, a slight variation in accuracy is not important.
Web Site Analytics Can Show:
- New visitors
- Returning visitors
- Number of pageviews
- Average time spent on the site
- Most viewed web pages
- Keywords used to find your site
- Traffic sources – could be other direct traffic, web sites with links to you or search engines etc.
- Search engines that are used to find your web site
- And a lot more valuable information…
What Do I Do With the Reports?
There are a lot of IF’s on analytics reporting. How you use the reports depends on your web site. IF you have a small site and a few of your web pages are not being seen, you can simply work on those pages to get them found – change copy/add links etc. IF you have a large e-commerce site with thousands of products, you’ll be looking at many more areas of marketing, sales and how the web site is performing to sell those products. You will also be looking at trends. Are new visitors up, but returning visitors down. Your site may be getting good search results, but the site needs altered so that people will return to it. Usability issues may be to blame and you can sometimes use web site analytics to determine that there is a problem and possibly how to fix it.
If you would like more information on web site analytics, please contact Link 2 at 330-374-9812
