What is Web Analytics?

Web analytics is the process of gathering, measuring and analysing user activity and behaviour on your website. Web analytics software interprets raw user data and outputs meaningful tables, charts and graphs that can be used to fine-tune crucial areas of a website in order to achieve your online business objectives.

Web analytics can give website owners increased insight into how effective their landing pages are in convincing visitors to opt-in to a mailing list or purchase a product. As such, web analytics can provide crucial information that can help develop strategic marketing decisions.

There are three main reasons for using analytics:

1. Support SEO Efforts
2. Improve Usability
3. Increase Accessibility

Support SEO Efforts

Search engine optimization drives visitors to the most relevant pages on your website. The concept is simple, similar to the way someone would use Yellow Pages to find an electrician, someone using a search engine to locate the products or services that you sell is highly likely to be in the market for those products or services.

What is your 5 most profitable keyphrases? What are your top landing pages? Which pages have the highest bounce rate? Web analytics is plays a decisive role in SEO. It lets you see where visitors are coming from, which terms they searched to find your site, which pages they land on and whether they hang around or immediately hit the back-button.

Analytics gives you the marketing intelligence, based on what works and what doesn't, to make informed SEO decisions. The SEO process becomes then feedback a bit like a feedback loop, getting better and better with every iteration.

Yet many companies fail to take advantage of web analytics, whether that's through time restraints, or they can't be bothered, or feel it's out with their technically skills. By improving the targeting and visibility of your website, you will increase your market share, raise brand awareness and extend product reach, all of which has a positive effect on the bottom line.

Improve Usability

It's relatively easy to publish a website, with today's WYSIWYG editors and Content Management Systems there is little requirement to gain a working knowledge of HTML. The potential audience is staggering, but that does not change the need to understand your audience. By understanding how visitors interact with your site you can help them achieve their goals quicker and easier. If your site "works" the way they do, the user experience will significantly increase and users will return time and time again.

Web analytics lets you see how visitors use and navigate your site. Are they struggling to achieve their goals? If they are, there is very little chance that you will achieve yours! According to IBM, every $1 invested in making your website easy-to-use returns $10 to $100.

Increase Accessibility

It's also important to understand the technology is the technology that is used to access your web pages. By making your pages accessible to older browsers, mobile technology and assistive devices, like screen readers, you can significantly reduce bounce rate because more people will be able to see your pages.

Web analytics will let you see which browsers (and browser version), screen resolutions, operating systems and more. Would you turn away customers from your shop because they arrived in the wrong type of car? No, then make sure you are not turning visitors away from your website because they use the 'wrong' browser.

If you are serious about your long term success online invest in web analytics. There may be a steep learning curve, but the payoff is huge