Why You Shouldnt Give Up On Web Analytics
Management Summary
Every website should have a goal. To put it bluntly, if a website doesn’t serve any purpose, you can take the site offline and save yourself the hosting fees. So if you haven’t yet defined a goal you want to achieve with your website, you should do so as soon as possible.
To then see or measure whether the desired goals are being achieved, use an analysis tool such as Google Analytics. The insights and information gained from the web analysis can then be used to plan further action in terms of online marketing. The following questions support planning and conception:
- Have I achieved my goals?
- If no: Why didn’t I achieve my goals?
- What can I do to achieve my goals?
- What are my further goals?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of my website?
- and much more.
Before these questions can be clarified, we first have to ask ourselves what web analysis actually is and how we get our data.
What is web analytics?
Web analysis is a measure to determine information regarding user behavior on the website. The information is recorded in the various analysis tools, evaluated and various key figures are calculated from it.
When analyzing, a basic distinction is made between two types:
Log file analysis:Here, automatic log files are created on the web server, which receive a time stamp every time they are accessed. This method is now rarely used because, compared to page tagging, it provides much less information and key figures, sometimes gives inaccurate numbers and requires regular updates.
Page tagging:With the help of a JavaScript code that must be installed on each individual page, information about your visit to the website is passed on to the analysis tool. In addition, an invisible 1×1 tracking pixel is integrated on the page. This ensures that if the JavaScript code is deactivated in the browser, at least the page views are counted. If the standard browser settings are called up, key figures such as stay times, conversion rates and bounce rates are simply available in the tool.
The most well-known and widely used PageTagging tool isGoogle Analytics. Google Analytics is free and can therefore be used primarily by companies with a small advertising budget.
If you need a significantly larger range of functions or have a lot of traffic on your website, it is better to use paid tools. Google also offers one of the leading tools here with its Enterprise solution.
These are the market leaders in this segment:
- Google Analytics 360
- Piwik PRO
- Etracker
- Adobe Marketing Cloud
The correct selection of the appropriate analysis tool depends on several factors, such as functionality, size of traffic, costs or compatibility with other tools, which need to be clarified in advance.
What is the goal of my website and what does that have to do with web analysis?
Quite simply: Without goals, you collect data and information without having any idea which of these data or key figures could be important for the company.
For this reason, goals must be defined in advance, which in most cases can be derived from the company’s goals.
Examples oftypical goalsof web analysis are:
- Selling products in the online shop
- Measuring the success of advertising measures and campaigns
- Strengthen customer loyalty
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Strengthen branding
- Increase awareness
Goals defined… what now?
After the goals have been defined, a tracking concept should be created and subsequently implemented in Google Analytics and the Google Tag Manager. This allows the goals to be precisely measured and evaluated.
ATag Management System(e.g. Google Tag Manager) is a tool with which you can manage all your tags without interfering with the source code. This means that various applications such as analysis tools, remarketing tools or testing tools can be implemented quickly and easily on the website. The tag management system also offers a good overview of existing tags.
If you have the goal of increasing sales in the online shop, key figures such as the ratio of buyers to total users or the abandonment rate in the purchasing process are important. Another important measurement can be which product performs best and which performs worst.
Tips on the topic of “tracking”
Now that goals have been defined and the tracking concept has been created, the only thing missing are ideas about what can be tracked.
The answer is short: ALMOST everything. Most analysis tools already provide a large number of detailed standard reports in the free version, which makes it much easier to get started. The following questions are usually very helpful and give a good overview of what is possible and useful:
- How many and through which channels do users come to my site?
- What is the average time spent on my site?
- What are people looking for on my site?
- What is the bounce rate? And where do my users leave the site?
(Attention: a high bounce rate for so-called “one-pagers” is completely normal) - How did my users interact with the various pages? Have videos been watched? Has the quiz been solved? etc.
- Which paths do my users take on the website?
- Which content/products are particularly interesting for my users?
- What is the relationship between online sales and the costs of online marketing activities?
- Which product or page performs best?
- Which campaign was particularly successful in terms of traffic generation and purchases?
- etc.
Using the data from these questions, optimizations can and should be carried out on the site. This means that the site is adapted to the wishes of the customers.
Conclusion:
Web analysis is the most important tool in online marketing. Without it, it is impossible to measure how the site is performing, which marketing measures or campaigns on the website are working and which errors should be fixed.
Based on the analyzed data, the website can be continuously adapted to the needs of the user in order to improve the user experience. This benefits both you as the website operator and the visitor to the site. A classic oneWin-win situation!
