Web Analytics Improves your bottom line

A few simple steps to gain a competitive edge

In small businesses and start-ups most of the site maintenance and evaluation is put onto the shoulders of the business owner. It can be really hard to keep track of everything else and find time to sit down and review your website analytics, but it is so important to know whether the content is effective or not. Many business owners continue to rely on cold-calling and pitching to strangers they hope to turn into prospects- this is crazy in our day and age.

The best use of your time is improving your business by providing exceptional services or products. Your time should be handling customer inquiries and moving your business forward- not spending time cold calling or prospect hunting with paid lists. Your website needs to be doing the heavy-lifting of turning strangers into prospects.

Part of this effort should be covered by the content and interactive elements you've supplied on each page, but to assume that this is as far as it goes is a huge oversight. Your website is just like a garden- it needs to be nurtured.

Web analytics allow you to look under the bonnet and see how well (or poorly) your website is running. Additionally, web analytics can link your content on other platforms, such as; Facebook or Twitter. The more you know about how visitors are interacting with your content the better you can fine-tune your website. A highly performing website can make all the difference to your existing sales funnel and significantly improve your ROI.

Here are the basic steps for extracting insights from your web analytics:

Understand Customer Intent

Essentially a few lines of code are added to each page; which is automatically generated by the analytics tool. This code will produce reports on general site-wide information, such as: page views and bounce rate.

Configure Settings

In order to asses "good" data from "bad" data the various conversion funnels will need to be stored within the analytics tool. These goals will allow us to determine how often a user performs specific actions that lead to positive outcomes; such as: completed registrations, subscribing to the newsletter, creating an ad, placing a bid, and even performing an internal search.

We need to capture the specific actions performed by each user in order to enhance and improve the sales funnel. Only through test and measurement of the online flows can processes be improved. If the majority of users are performing the same searches there may need to be a quick link provided upon point of entry to enhance the experience and serve relevant information directly.

Another important consideration is that not all actions will occur on the website. Thanks to open API's most users will be able to take action through external webpages and devices. Essentially, what the report needs to determine is how users are interacting with the platform (*think platform not website).

Campaign Tracking

In order to accurately assess the ROI for online advertising and promotion it is critical that each and every Ad has a unique code associated with it. This includes emails, banners, referral links, and directory listings. The tag needs to include the location, source, and any other parameters surrounding the online marketing strategy for that particular promotion.

This requires time and a designated body assessing that the code is accurate and reports are verified. There are tools to help with the manual entry associated with campaign tracking, but it will require a person to manage and perform data entry.

It is very important to know where traffic is coming from and which referring websites are producing regular flows of traffic. The more relevant a promotion the higher the conversion rate which means a good return on investment. It's important to determine which websites refer traffic based on internal search terms and top tags.

Tracking Revenue & Intelligence

Additional JavaScript code will need to be embedded onto each page in order to extract data out of the page. The code will provide instructions for the script to know what data needs to be collected. Due to the fact that this data is personal and user generated it is important that all privacy measures have been taken into consideration. Legal evaluation of the data being collected is required; not only because of the user's right to privacy, but because company data will be exported into an external tool and then processed into a report.

The value of this data is high and crucial for assessing gaps and accuracy of online forms, the payment gateway, and internal processes for user management. It is also required for measuring the payments being processed through your web platform.

Metrics to be collected include:

• Daily Payments
• Daily Fees Collected
• Event Tracking

valuating the effectiveness of rich media is paramount for any web 2.0 platform. Monitoring user interactions with content such as: videos, widgets, apps, audio, and any other user generated content. Developers will need to create and embed code into each piece of rich media content in order to track behaviour.

Reporting can include:

• How often a video is played.
• Viral distribution of content (sent via which aggregator)
• How often a user opens an app
• How often a user interacts via mobile device
• Action via Widgets and Gadgets

The challenge is not collecting data; but rather, in its evaluation and analysis. How and when decisions are made requires the right data at the right time. Timing is critical for proactive enhancements. By understanding the structure of digital media it is possible to improve the life of the product and the duration of its effectiveness.

The test and measure philosophy for success provides the awareness that no project is ever complete. It is crucial to acquire data that is actionable, and to discard data that is unhelpful or irrelevant. This principle seems simple, but assessing 'good' data from 'bad' data is unique to every web application, platform, and piece of content. Determining the KPIs (key performance indicators) requires trial and error.

Please contact us to discuss how you can improve your bottom line by reviewing your current web analytics. We want to help you get the most out of your online marketing and a crucial part of that is the measuring and analysis you can do with a more sophisticated understanding of Google Analytics.