Web Analytics

1. Understanding of web analytics

Why marketers, especially digital marketers, need to understand web analytics is because it is one of the most important parts in digital marketing, and it shows us the proof of the work. In other words, it shows the results by numbers, so it helps marketers to improve. If something is not working well, you can find the problem and fix it by looking at the data you have. Like 19th century British mathematician, William Thomson said "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."

2. The key metrics web analytics

Understanding web analytics is really important, and there are some key metrics in web analytics.

The first one is the Audience. Why it is one of the key metrics is because they are the ones that visit your website, and web analytics tells where they are from, demographics (age range and gender), or even their interests, device type, and browsers. Not only that, but it also tells if they are a new visitor or a returning visitor, which is the most important one in audience because it is connected with marketing funnel, and it is:

Awareness → Interest → Desire → Action

This is the marketing funnel, and if they are a new visitor, this means that their awareness is working. On the other hand, if they are a returning visitor, they have desire in your product. This helps marketers to clear their target audiences, and if returning visitor rate is high, this means that you are doing something right because people keep coming back to your product.

The second one is Acquisition. This tells "how visitors arrive at a website?" In other words, which one of your marketing efforts is bringing people to your website. People usually arrive through a few channels, such as directly typing in a website URL, via email, or through ads. Why Acquisition helps to uncover is that, for example, if paid search has a higher percentage than the others, then you can spend more money on paid search because it has the highest percentage, and people actually see it more than the others.

The third one is Engagement. This is about the connection between people and the website, and it tells Visit, Sessions, Views, and Events.

Visit: Visiting a website counts as one.

Sessions: Actually doing something on website, and if they do, it counts as one.

Views: One view per page

Events: Tell about almost any interaction they have on a website (How many times people downloaded this website)

This tells if your website is interesting for people who have visited and what they actually did. This means that you can check which part people are actually paying attention to. It totally depends on your goals, and by tracking what they did, you can see which one is working and which one is not. This leads to the final stage of this funnel.

The last one is Conversion. This is the final step, and this is important because it leads to real results. It can be a small step like completing small things (micro-conversation) or a big goal like making a purchase (macro-conversation). These and Key Performance Indicator have a really good connection, and it tells if it's succeeding or failing by using numbers and percentages. You can find problems and improve, if targeting people who didn't finish buying by tracking the steps (ex, add to cart). After all that, you have to compare data because it only makes sense with the context.

3. How web analytics can identify which succeeds and fails

Web analytics shows which marketing strategy works and which doesn't, so you can compare things to see what is better for you. Not only that, but it also shows where people leave the website, so that you will be able to know what needs to be fixed.

Conclusion

Web analytics is a really important thing to understand for digital marketers because it tells almost everything. “What gets measured gets done.”