What is Web Analytics?

One of the essentials of any marketing campaign is the ability to analyze the results. You want to know what’s working – and what isn’t. Web analytics can help you figure out the most effective tactics for your marketing campaign. Web analytics can also be used to help you track your offline efforts. Unique URLs used in traditional, offline ads, as well as phone numbers tracked by tools like ifbyphone, can be incorporated into your web analytics.

There are a number of tools to help you track your marketing efforts – online and offiline –  and use the information learned from analytics to adjust your tactics and improve your approach. The proper use of web analytics can help you gain the biggest bang for your online marketing buck. One of the best tools is Google’s Web Analytics. It provides a great deal of useful information on what search terms are drawing people to your site, as well as information about what pages visitors go to.

Who’s Visiting Your Site?

Web analytics can help you see who is visiting your site, what visitors are looking for, and where they are coming from. You can use web analytics to determine which ads are working most effectively, as well as what visitors to your site are looking for. Using baseline metrics to determine your normal visitor rate, it’s possible to analyze where a spike in traffic to your site, or to a specific page, is coming from.

Establishing baseline metrics, and understanding the visitors that usually come to your site is the first step in successful analysis. Once you know this information, you can begin targeting different keywords, as well as trying out different ads to see which work best at generating leads. You can even use web analytics to see conversation action – helping you determine which social media conversations are providing the best lead generation.

Your web analytics can also provide you with information about how long people remain on your site. It also includes information about impressions, which is how many times the page or ad is viewed. Additionally, you can learn about unique visitors to your site. Even if a visitor visits many pages, resulting in dozens of impressions, s/he will only appear as a single visit. You can also determine how many visitors are returning to your site, and how many are first-time visitors.

Testing Different Tactics

You can use web analytics to test the effectiveness of different tactics. There are two especially helpful types of testing when it comes to figuring out the best elements of your online marketing campaign:

• A/B Testing
  With this type of testing, you try out different versions of an ad, or of content. You track which version provides the most visitors. The use of special tags helps you keep track of which version is generating the most leads.
• Multivariate Testing
  In this type, you mix up different elements, changing more than one part of your marketing. This type of testing can also be used to determine which combination of elements is most effective.

Your testing can also include which items result in more conversions. You can test out different background colors on landing pages, or which wording results in more opt-in email sign-ups. Your testing program should be carefully thought out and executed so that the data you receive is actually useful.

The Search Funnel

One of the uses of web analytics is the use of a search funnel. The way Internet searchers looking for desired information online is referred to as a funnel. Searchers start with broad keywords, and then gradually narrow their search to what they want specifically.

A good online marketing campaign recognizes the stages of the search funnel, and takes advantage of what searchers are likely to use to reach their site. Your web analytics can provide you with the information you need to maximize the search funnel that brings users to your site.

Web analytics are essential to successful online advertising; the savvy use of available data can result in more sales leads and increased conversions.