Understanding the Benefits of Web Analytics for Online Business Growth

Web Analytics is defined by the process of collection, reporting, and analysis of website data.

The biggest challenge of running an online business is having a well-defined marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy keeps your brand alive and helps you stay ahead of your competitor. The growth of your business depends on the competency of your marketing efforts.

And one of the best-defined ways to strengthen your online marketing efforts is to understand your customers. Web analytics is a tool that helps in doing so.

What is Web Analytics?

The one line definition is not sufficient to understand this complex subject, so here we go.

When you develop a website for your business, you need to measure its success rate from time to time. Based on what you find you can tweak your marketing campaign so that you would generate some decent revenue for your business.

Web analytics is what you have to choose to achieve all these.

Web Analytics,

‘It is a method or technique that involves an in-depth study of visitors, navigation,   and traffic patterns to determine the success of a website.’

You might have this question, hey it’s not just you, but everyone has the same question, why?

‘What is the purpose of knowing about things that you cannot change?’

Well, sir, you have already invested on your website, now you are still investing on your marketing campaign, are you not tensed or at least curious to know where your money is going?

Your research or study whatever you call it should be at granular level. Basically, the data collected through the web analytics program includes,

1. Web Traffic Reports; Source of Traffic;
2. Direct Main Campaign Data;
3. E-mail Response Rates;
4. Bounce Rate;
5. No of Sessions; Length of Sessions;
6. Number of Organic Users; Number of New Users;
7. Sales and Lead Information;
8. Click heat mapping, user performance data;
9. Custom financial and non-financial metrics.

I hope you understood what web analytics is and what we exactly collect/do. And the purpose is also needed, right?

Straightaway measuring the metrics you aren’t going to get benefits but you would know what you should be doing to get them.

5 Ways Web Analytics will help you grow your Online Business

No. 1:  Measuring Web Traffic & Conversion

Website traffic is very crucial. Businessmen spend their time and money on multiple channels or means to improve the incoming traffic.

From paid ads to social media platforms to emails, different tactics are adopted so there would be some decent traffic and hence conversions. But altogether, marketing expressively on so many platforms is unnecessary. You need to approach only those channels where you would get something.

Web Analytics is definitely a help in this matter.

You can check which keyword is activating the interests of your audience. Or through which search engine the traffic is more or which social media platform is giving more conversions.

If you know what works for you, it will be much easier to focus your energy only towards that source.

Doing so not only saves you time and money but also improves conversion rates.

No. 2: Tracking Bounce Rate & Identifying Exit Pages

Sometimes it’s necessary to understand what’s not working for you rather than what is working for you.

Online marketing is something, where most of the times things don’t work and campaigns are to be optimized from time to time to make things work in your favor.

Coming to exit rate and bounce rate, they are the most confused terms. People use them as synonyms, which is wrong.

Before you know why it’s important to measure both, learn how they are different from each other.

BOUNCE RATE:

Bounce rate is a single page session to the total number of all sessions, this is how the analytics tool calculate bounce rate.

In simple words, bounce rate defines the percentage of people who move away from the website immediately after he lands on a particular web page (He doesn’t go beyond that page).

EXIT RATE:

Exit rate, is the percentage of visitors who jump to other websites/leave the website after having visited at least some pages.

In simple words, it is the last page a user will be on before he leaves the website.

Suppose your website has good traffic but has no/bad conversions then probably you should check with these two metrics.

If the exit rate is more at the end of a session/deal it is not bad. Like, it usually happens where a customer leaves thank you page after buying a product. But if it happens on any one of the other pages, then you should definitely identify such pages and work on it.

Now coming to the bounce rate, it’s much easier to interpret.

Suppose you walk into a restaurant and leave after two seconds, it happens only if you don’t find what you were looking for in the menu. So, bounce rate can be both good and bad.

If it’s bad, you should find the reason and work on it.

No. 3: Understanding how the Visitor Behaves on your Website

Online business is like a game of chess. Before you actually move your pawn you should know what your opponent is thinking.

Your customers are your opponents and to win over them you need to understand them before you actually make any move.

Understanding user-behavior should be your top priority if you are ever going to make some smart decisions for your internet marketing campaign. If you have ever used analytics tool or going to use then straightaway focus your energy on the behavior category.

You have five main categories, real-time, audience, acquisition, behavior, and conversions. With the behavior flow report, which defines what or how exactly a user is going on with each category, then it will be much more convenient for you to optimize your marketing campaigns.

No. 4: Learn More about Keyword Research

Organic traffic counts more than paid traffic, because, every time you do not have to think about spending on ad campaigns or the benefits it’s going to give.

When you think your SEO efforts are giving you some quality results like good traffic inflow then probably you should be looking into the sources.

Once you gather information about sources, you have to have an insight on which keyword is letting your audience on your website. Doing so, you can optimize your websites for the keywords that work for you.

Steps to be followed:

• Log into Google Analytics Account > Click on ‘Traffic Sources’ tab > ‘Keywords’ tab.
• Select ‘Date Range’ > Click on ‘Goal Set’ Tab.
• Sort the Goal Column to view Goal Conversion percentage from highest to lowest.
• To view at least 50 to 100 rows, select at the bottom.