The Basics
The
goal of web analytics is to measure the success of a given website. And the
success of a website is ultimately dictated by the behavior of its users. Therefore,
the idea behind analytics is to track users as they interact with a website in
order to shed light on any strengths and weaknesses within that website. From
there, marketers can use analytics data to make the appropriate changes to the
website.
The
following paper will give a brief summary of web analytics and a few related
topics that are crucial to understand as a contemporary marketing professional.
As marketing momentum shifts from brick and mortar storefronts to the online
marketplace, it is the marketer’s job to understand how and why this is
happening, and capitalize on it moving forward.
Web Metrics
Web
analytics data is comprised largely of web
metrics. Metrics are the numbers and figures that illustrate the activity
taking place on a website. There are a huge number of metrics that can be
tracked, so the business of selecting the most insightful metrics becomes very
important. And as Kaushik points out, the simplest of metrics can actually be
the most insightful. (Digital model, 2013)
The
most basic metric is unique visitors.
Unique visitors are a representation of the number of people who visited your
site during a certain time period. It may seem rather surface level at first,
however, unique visitors is a gage that reveals which promotional efforts are
translating into more visitors and which are not.
Visits constitutes the amount of visitors who interacted
with a website and requested one or more pages.
Again,
page views is a very simple metric,
and yet it can quickly and easily reveal which pages are working with users and
which are not.
An event is any recorded action that has a
date and time assigned to it, making it ideal for tracking. An event includes
things like downloads, ad clicks, and video views.
These
are four foundational web metrics that are key in understanding the more advanced
concepts of web analytics. The next challenge is the task of tracking all these
various metrics. Which will be tackled in the following section.
Google Analytics
Google
Analytics is a powerful web analytics tool that is utilized by millions of
marketers, business people, and content developers. Google analytics can be
used to yield a host of valuable information regarding how users interact with
all sorts of different websites. It tracks and organizes web data into
actionable research, and does so free of charge. This has made Google Analytics
one of the most popular web analytics tools in existence.
Google
analytics goals allow marketers to
track the flow of users by setting up and monitoring specific interactions
within your site. Goals can give marketers an idea of what users are doing
during their time on a site, and what aspects of your site are adding or taking
away value.
The
goals that one chooses to setup within Google Analytics depends heavily on
website type and the desired business outcomes. Kaushik stresses the importance
of identifying concrete business objectives before picking your analytics
goals. Essentially, your digital goals will need to grow out of the basic goals
of your business. (Digital model, 2013)
|
Business Objective (Offline)
|
Google Analytics Goal (Website)
|
|
Create B2B network >
|
>
Capture contact information
|
|
Increase awareness of new
products >
|
>
Generate downloads of product guide
|
|
Generate social media
following >
|
>
Engage users via social tab
|
Once
one has determined their goals for a website, it’s important to then determine
corresponding key performance indicators.
For instance, in the table above, we would need to elaborate on our goals by
identifying which KPIs indicate whether or not our goal is being achieved.
(Digital model, 2013)
|
Google Analytics Goal
|
Corresponding KPI
|
|
Capture contact information >
|
> Conversion
of sign-up form
|
|
Generate downloads of
product guide >
|
> Number of downloads
|
|
Engage users via social
tab >
|
> Conversion of social tab
|
Once
you have defined your goals and KPI’s you are ready to analyze your conversions. A conversion is any
measurable, completed activity on your website. For instance, downloading a
product guide would be a completed conversion. Every time an ecommerce site
makes a sale, that is a completed conversion.
Ultimately, goal conversions will be understood by examining your
conversion rate. Conversion rate
represents the amount of unique visitors who completed a certain task out of
the total number of unique visitors.
In
order to get a more accurate look at conversion rate, there are a variety of
customizable elements within Google Analytics. Kaushik notes that segmentation is key when evaluating
your conversions. Seeing a figure that represents outcomes over all unique
visitors doesn’t really tell us much. What about outcomes vs. unique visitors
from a certain region? Or what about outcomes vs. unique visitors coming from a
certain URL? These sort of adjustments could reveal some pleasant surprises for
your business. (Conversion basics, 2013)
Along
the same lines as segmentation, marketers can also utilize filters in order to generate more focused data. Filters can be used
to focus on data coming from specific domains. One of the most common uses of
the filter tool is to exclude data from internal IP addresses. In other words,
it can be used to ensure that traffic generated from your own company and
employees is not reported.
While
goal conversions are a very valuable tool in web analytics, the addition of funnels to your mix can add much deeper
insights. Funnels take into account the various steps that it takes in order to
reach a completed conversion. A user may have to click on a number of pages
before they make a purchase or click on a download. Within this process, there
may be any number problems impeding the completion of the intended goal. Funnels
are a function that allows marketers to isolate each step and identify any
problem areas. Are there any technical bugs? Misleading copy? Where are we
losing users? Basically, funnels will reveal any evident level of confusion
that seems to be hindering your goal conversions.
Within
Google Analytics, one can input the URLs of each page of a funnel which is essential
in determining the funnel conversion rate. The funnel conversion rate represents the percentage of visits that
included a click of the first page in the funnel and the final page of the
funnel, or the goal page. (KISSmetrics, 2013)
Reports
Google Analytics data is
organized and presented in the form of reports. There are a great number of reports
available to Google Analytics users, each dealing with specific areas of
website information. Reports are organized into categories like visitor,
traffic, content, and keyword. Users also have the opportunity to create their
own custom reports.
Social Media Analytics
Google
Analytics and similar analytics programs provide an excellent solution to
tracking basic website data, but what about social media? How do marketers
measure the effectiveness of their social media efforts?
Luckily,
there are a number of social media tools available to today’s marketer. There
is even a plugin that is compatible with Google Analytics (Lesson 3, 2013).
When
considering a social analytics approach, it is important to keep in mind that
the ultimate goal of social media is to create engagement and interaction
between consumer and brand (Lake, 2009).
With
this in mind, we can start to identify some of the key performance indicators
within the social media realm. In social media terms, engagement translates
into comments, shares, followers, and posts, among others. These are the sorts
of things marketers want to look at as they begin to track social media.
Search Engine Optimization
Search
engines utilize spiders to retrieve and index web pages from the Internet. SEO
is the process of making adjustments to your website in order to generate a
higher ranking in search engine results pages or SERPs. The goal behind SEO is
to produce more traffic to a website. If a site appears on the 20th
page of search engine results, then it has a very low chance of being clicked
on. SEO involves a variety of on-page and off-page techniques to boost a sites
search engine rankings to increase the likelihood of being clicked on. For
sites that rely on traffic to generate revenue, SEO is a necessity. In fact,
SEO is so crucial for marketers, that the temptation to employ exploitative
techniques threatens the fabric of SERPs.
Keyword/Phrase Selection
Keyword
selection is a critical step in the pursuit of higher search rankings. Keywords
and phrases are terms built into your website design that mirror the most
common search terms from web users. When selected properly, keywords ensure
that your site has the exact content that people are searching for. Search engines
will recognize this, and boost the site’s search engine rankings.
There
are a variety of keyword tools available for determining the highest volume
keywords. And while volume is an extremely important indicator for a keyword,
there are other less obvious determinants that can lead to quality keyword
selection.
First,
marketers should focus on incorporating the best converting keywords to their
sites. Which keywords are synonymous with customers who are ready to act?
And
second, are your keywords related to your content? There is no sense in
choosing keywords based on volume alone. If they are loosely related to
content, this may succeed in generating traffic in the short term but your site
will suffer when it comes to converting. (Enge, n.d.)
Off-page Techniques
Whereas
on page optimization involves manipulating the elements of a website to produce
a more search engine-friendly destination, off-page optimization leverages
outside promotional channels to grow the popularity of a website.
Link Building
One
of the most significant contributors to search engine rankings is link
building. Search engines will evaluate a website based on the number and
significance of the external links that lead to the target site (Lesson 8,
2013). Links can be purchased, exchanged, or generated organically by producing
compelling content. There are a few factors that determine the effectiveness of
a link.
A
link from a popular site is worth far more to search engines than a link from
an unknown site. Websites that have links from popular websites have a much
easier time gaining trust from search engines. (Moz, 2013)
In
addition to a link’s popularity, the degree to which a link is topic-specific
goes a long with way with search engines. For instance, a dietary supplement
site that links with a health food distributor is a very topic-specific link.
These outlets belong to the same community, and matter a lot more than links
from outside the community.
Blackhat Techniques
If
you are willing to risk penalization from search engines, one can take a blackhat
approach to link building. The practice of building link farms and dummy pages
that link back to the target site is a common practice that produces a high
amount of phony links that, when undetected, can boost search engine rankings
quickly and affordably.
Social Channels
The
popularity of a website does not rely entirely on the notion of SEO, these days
there are a variety of social channels that help get the word out. Some of the
most powerful social channels are Google Adwords and Facebook Ads. In 2012, it was reported that Google
had a global advertising reach of just over 2 billion users, while Facebook had
a reach of 900 million. (E-telligence, 2013)
There
are a few points of contention between these advertising channels. First, a lot
of marketers would argue that Google Adwords has a far superior audience in
terms of their intent to buy. Often times, Google users are on Google because
they are actively pursuing a purchase. They are farther down on the sales
funnel. Facebook is comprised of an audience that may have no intention of
purchasing anything. They are simply there to communicate with friends.
However,
proponents of Facebook Ads would argue that although Facebook’s audience may
not be as “ready to buy,” Facebook’s platform allows for superior segmenting,
ensuring that ads are being seen by the right people. Facebook allows marketers
to hone in on their audience on the basis of demographics, psychographics and
geography. You can target specific age groups, or key in on interests and
lifestyles (Carter, 2010).
Conclusion
For marketers, the
advantages of utilizing web analytics, search engine optimization and social
channels are plentiful. There are so many techniques and tools out there that almost
any kind of website with any kind of goal can benefit from the use of web
analytics. However, what it all boils down to for many, is marketing accountability and
ROI. Conducting marketing activities online allows for far more
measurability than traditional marketing. With web analytics, marketers can
directly attribute marketing dollars to rises in sales and engagement. This is
an attribute that sits very well with business people.
References
Kaushik, A. (2013). Digital
marketing and measurement model. Retrieved 21 December 2013 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/
Kaushik, A. (2013).
Conversion rate basics & best practices. . Retrieved 21 December 2013 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/
KISSmetrics. (2013). Google
analytics funnel conversion guide. Retrieved 21 December 2013 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/
Enge, E. (N.d.). The art of
keyword selection. Retrieved 22 December 2013 from http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/the-art-of-keyword-selection.shtml
WVU Staff. (2013). Lesson 8:
SEO/ On page optimization. Retrieved 22 December 2013 from https://learn.wvu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2FdisplayLearningUnit%3Fcourse_id%3D_1678_1%26content_id%3D_102557_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue
Moz. (2013). Growing
popularity & links. Retrieved 22 December 2013 from http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
WVU Staff. (2013). Lesson 3:
Social media analytics & advertising channels. Retrieved 22 December 2013
from https://learn.wvu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2FdisplayLearningUnit%3Fcourse_id%3D_1678_1%26content_id%3D_102557_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue
Lake, C.
(2009, October 30). 35 social media kpis to help measure engagement. Econsultancy
Blog. Retrieved on March 23, 2012 from http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement.
E-telligence.
(2013). Google Adwords vs. Facebook Ads [Infographic]. Retrieved 11 November
2013 from http://visual.ly/google-adwords-vs-facebook-ads
Carter, B.
(2013). Facebook advertising vs. Google adwords. Retrieved 11 November 2013
from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-advertising-vs-google-adwords/25532/
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