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December 11, 2007
Web Analytics: GPS Navigation for your Internet Business
By Victor Valks, Web Analyst
CPA Empire
Would you begin a holiday road trip without checking the weather forecast, monitoring the roads and the traffic, and adjusting your journey accordingly? Of course you wouldn’t. Awareness of travel conditions can help ensure a smooth voyage.
Developing your business on the information superhighway can be just as challenging to navigate, but the right analytics strategy can help your Internet business succeed.
According to a report published recently by E-Consultancy.com, online marketers regard web analytics as the “single most important method for gathering intelligence in the context of improving engagement with customers.”
Web analytics involves using site data to determine how well an organization’s Internet presence meets its business objectives. Data is collected and measured against key performance indicators, to identify the best ways to optimize the online business.
Two primary methods exist for collecting and manipulating web data: log file analysis and page tagging. Log file analysis uses the log files, in which a web server saves all transactions, to make information available to various analytical tools like WebTrends. Page tagging uses JavaScript to send information about each page to a product like Google Analytics. WebTrends and Google Analytics each use this data to provide reporting on visitor loyalty, geography, and the success of advertisements and marketing campaigns.
Other companies that provide web analytics tools include Omniture, IndexTools, Coremetrics, Snoobi, Unica, and SAS. Each of their products provides a standard set of reports, with information on visitors’ browser and version, regional settings, entrance and exit pages, length of visit, and other key metrics.
The E-Consultancy report advises companies to use a variety of tools and resources to ensure that all reporting needs are being met, noting that any single approach used in isolation has limitations.
Various industries often have very different key performance metrics. For example, some organizations may need to calculate its site’s Committed Visitor Index (CVI) – the average number of page views for long visits. Not all analytics tools can measure this statistic. It’s important to identify these key metrics and make sure that the analytics tools you select will meet your reporting needs.
Although web analytics involves elements of math and computer science, you don’t need to hire a statistician or an engineer to implement a successful web analytics strategy. Most web analytics products are relatively simple to configure and utilize. You will need a solid understanding of Internet technology and fairly strong analytical skills as these skills can help you define the business requirements for web analytics, implement a solution, and monitor its success.
Resources like the Web Analytics Association and Eric Peterson’s Web Analytics Demystified blog can help businesses and professionals get started and share information on the industry.
The key is to recognize the benefits that web analytics can bring to your business, and that you won’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand the results.
Posted by Tom at December 11, 2007 03:17 AM