Web analytics is also called: Usage Statistics, Customer Analytics, Click Through Analysis, Website Analytics, Web Usage Analysis, and Internet Usage Analysis.
Importance of Web Analytics Solutions
Web analytics solutions provide a good understanding of users’ behaviour and help both measure existing campaigns as well as shape future strategies, as they are based on user interests and preferences. Planning marketing strategies without understanding potential customers is just like firing in the dark without knowing the target.
Choosing Web Analytics Services
There are quite a number of web analytics services, some of which are available free whilst others are paid services. The easiest method of finding information about web analytics services is through search engines. Using the free Google Analytics Service can be a good choice, as it is quite popular and used by many websites.
Although Google Analytics Service is free, there are some limitations to the control that it offers. Some other paid web analytics services are more powerful and can give a marketer much detailed knowledge about user activities. Therefore, for an indepth understanding of the browsing pattern of visitors picking the right web analytics software is very important.
Benefits of Web Analytics Systems
Using web analytics systems can bring great benefits namely:-
Web analytics systems help examine and understand user activities and behaviour on the website such as to name a few: the geographical region of the visitor, his or her IP address, how many times he or she has visited which particular page or pages and how much time was spent on each page, what key terms have been typed to find those page/s, which navigation paths was taken, entrance and exit pages, bounce rates etc.
Once the visitors behaviour is understood, necessary changes can be made to the website accordingly such as for example modifying particular pages or topics to outline their relevance and optimize their user-friendliness or, to improve pages that were previously ignored or understated.
Web analytics systems can thus help marketers improve their marketing research and formulate better marketing strategies. Marketing strategies based on actual data and facts are more prone to succeed than those based on assumptions.
Web analytics is often used as part of CRM analytics. The analysis can include determining the likelihood that a visitor will repurchase a product or a service after having purchased it in the past, monitoring the pound volume of purchases made by individual visitor or by specific groups of visitors, observing the geographic regions from which the most and the least customers visit the site, etc.
Companies should use web analytics in order to promote specific products or services to those visitors most likely to buy them, and to determine which products or services a specific visitor is most likely to purchase. This can only help companies to improve the ratio of revenue to marketing costs.