What is Web Analytics?
Web Analytics is studying the online behavior of the audiences visiting your website, and knowing how to improve it, looking at the data from mediums like Google Analytics. In the long run, analytics helps businesses analyze their customer behavior and make various decisions based on the data.
If you take an example of an eCommerce store, you need a good amount of traffic to generate sales, however, not every person visiting your online store ends up buying. The pattern can be seen through analytics of who is coming from where, which pages are more viewed, bounce rate, sessions, organic and paid traffic, number of unique visitors, referrals and so on that makes it easier for businesses to make decisions.
How does Web Analytics help you understand the data?
Tools like Google Analytics help you understand the data such as new visitors, behavioral analysis, referral traffic, most visited pages, geographical location, and so much more. Analytics helps you analyze KPIs that drive traffic to your website. For instance, what search engine people are using, the most used keywords, organic/paid/referral traffic, the number of sessions, bounce rates, and so on. This helps understand visitors’ behavior and track the data in real time.
Businesses can use this insight to improve their marketing plans, by tweaking their keyword strategies, email marketing campaigns according to the demographics, social media campaigns, and designing the website better with good product and service landing pages. The thoughtful act of marketing can help you reduce the cost of the ads.
Tools to understand Web Analytics better
Google Analytics
It is one of the most used tools by marketers for analytics purposes and it is free to use provided by Google. If you want to learn digital marketing, the study of Google Analytics is a must. It helps you understand your visitors better.
Google Webmaster
Google Webmaster is also a tool by Google that is free to use, wherein you need to verify your domain. It helps you track your visitors on the search engine and lets you know about the most frequently used keyword to find your website. Additionally, you can also create sitemaps, index the website quicker, and so on.
CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg helps you create a heatmap of your visitors which helps you find out the clicks and visits of your visitors to different parts of your website, it can be useful to realize what section of your website gets clicks and what needs to be optimized.
Statcounter
One of my favorite analytics tools. One can get real-time information with Statcounter, from where your visitors came, what pages they looked at, at what time, the returning visitors, device and so much is offered which makes it easier to analyze the data.
Looker Studio
Looker Studio is not a tool that helps you get the insight and metrics, however, it enables you to visualize the analytics data after integration with the tools. This is also one of the helpful tools to be used by Webmasters to tell their story.
There are plenty of other tools on the internet today. One needs to figure out what works best for you and your business. Depending on the tool it can come free and paid.
Businesses can highly benefit from the use of Analytics on their website. It gives them an overview of their business which helps them in taking a decision. Web Analytics tells you a story with lots of facts and figures, you can create your own story with it. Since, many businesses are online today, knowing web analytics using them and taking business decisions can be of major help.