Web Analytics

In retail marketing, it is important to observe what customers actually do in your shop, including finding out what it is they are looking for, how easily they were able to find those items, whether they finally bought those items. With these observations and other information that you collate, you can intelligently tweak your retail space so that more customers fulfil your business goals. These tweaks (optimisations) include making adjustments to your advertising, shop layout, product placement and use of promotional material such as shelf wobblers and signage.

In digital marketing, it is equally important to observe the behaviour of visitors to your website so that you can make informed improvements to it and reach your business goals more effectively. This process is largely driven by web analytics. According to the Web Analytics Association (WAA), web analytics is defined as ‘the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.’

Early web analytics software dates back to 1995. From 1996 hit counters became a common feature on websites, thereby introducing web statistics to the wider public. These web counters indicated the number of visits a webpage had received, providing a crude indication of a page’s popularity. The notion persists to the present day that visitor numbers are a key statistic, when in reality this is probably the most useless website statistic of all, at least when viewed in the absence of other far more useful data.

Today, there are a wide variety of web analytics software available to website owners, including Google Analytics, which provide both free and premium options, and Adobe’s premium service, Omniture. The free version of Google Analytics is easy to set up, customisable, very powerful and can provide you with a wealth of clickstream data. So much data is available that it is easy to get caught up in the process of spitting out masses of ‘impressive’ but bewildering statistics, and calling that activity web analytics reporting. As you can see from the WAA definition; collection, measurement and reporting are not the entire process – the ‘art’ of web analytics lies in being able to analyse appropriate data and then draw meaningful conclusions from it that enable actionable business decisions to be made.

As powerful as programs such as Google Analytics may be, they usually have weaknesses stemming from the methods they use to collect data that can mean that some data is omitted. For instance, Google Analytics relies on tracking cookies to collect information. Cookies are merely small text files that transfer information between the browser you are using (e.g. Firefox or Internet Explorer) and a website’s server, enabling the website to remember your preferences – such as serving content in your chosen language, or displaying prices in your relevant currency. Without cookies, e-commerce would probably not be possible. If you disable or block cookies in your web browser, some website features may not work at all – this also thwarts Google Analytics tracking cookies. Since two different analytics programmes can produce different statistics for the same item being reported on, it is usually more important to view and evaluate the overall trends your data reveals over a period of time than get caught up on statistics within a single reporting period.

Google Analytics and similar software can usually only provide you with quantitative (numerical, measurable) data about your site visitors’ actions – it cannot provide you with qualitative (observable, not truly measurable) data such as the level of frustration or confusion users may be experiencing when trying to navigate your site, or whether or not they understood or enjoyed a particular piece of content on your site.

Author and Google Analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik – widely regarded as the ‘guru’ of web analytics – provides this revised definition: “Web Analytics 2.0 is the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition’s, to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers, and potential customers have, which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline).”

From Kaushik’s helpful definition, we can see that qualitative data is enshrined in the web analytics process. Qualitative data can be derived from many offline and online sources including online surveys, user comments (if your site has a commenting facility) and information users leave elsewhere online (or offline) about your site and brand (e.g. on Twitter, Facebook and blogs). Furthermore, his definition includes from your website and the competition – emphasising the importance of looking at what your competitors are doing online, incorporating this into the analysis, and adjusting your strategy to counter any threats this reveals.

Whilst your initial use of analytics may not encompass all the above, don’t be daunted – if you haven’t done so already, register a Google Analytics account, get the account code added to your website, and start exploring this powerful reporting tool! If you are running a suite of different digital marketing assets, do also start getting to grips with any built-in analytics capabilities these offer (e.g. Facebook Insights, YouTube Analytics) and incorporate this into your decision making.

Alan Vesty is a Quirk-accredited Digital Marketer, and manages a growing suite of digital assets for the African Branch
of Cambridge University Press.
Visit their Bookseller’s News blog on
http://booksellers.cup.co.za