Is web analytics a worthy investment?

How do you know if you are being successful within search engines?

You can check your “rank” at search engines for particular keywords, analyze log files to see the actual terms people used to reach your web site or make the ultimate jump and “close the loop” by measuring sales conversions and return-on-investment (ROI).

People typically pull up their site analytics, look at their dashboards and freak out. Those that are on top of their data are the ones who define their goals from the start. How can you measure without a goal to measure it by? Seems simple but many miss that important point. Web sites without analytics are not worth running. You are losing money and you just don’t know where. Page visits, top ten pages, unique visitors, etc. are from the caveman days. They don’t really define what is going on.

SEO – if customers can’t find you, you aren’t there. Usability – if they can’t find it, it’s not there. Analytics – they tell you what just happened. Analytics are not necessarily about the numbers, but the process. What hinders people from getting to point A to point B? This starts with segmentation. Numbers don’t show you the whole picture. Without segmentation, you will not know the why’s. It tells you the factors that lead to the actual numbers, which will then help you to adjust your strategy.

Web analytics has many benefits.

Some of these benefits include;

Tracking website visitations, hits, conversions, trends, ROI, goals etc.

With a web analytics solution:

• You can monitor where your site traffic is coming from.
• The IP addresses of your visitor.
• Track their actions by sequence with a time stamp.

It can also measure

• How many users visit your site, how many return, and how often
• How users are navigating through your site
• Where in the “conversion funnel” or purchasing process they’re getting stuck and leaving
• What content your visitors are looking for, and whether they’re finding it
• Exactly which form fields are driving people away rather than bringing them in

With analytics, you can also monitor your visitors by seeing which browser type, operating system and which originating country they are visiting from. This will allow you to create the most effective website and will help users gain the maximum experience while they are visiting your company site.

With web analytics, being analytical is not enough, but it should also be combined with creativity and company knowledge.

82 percent of people reading analytics think it is confusing, mostly because there is too much information to collect. As far as where people are coming from when they land on your sites, there are so many inlets. Trying to measure the effectiveness of each inlet is a daunting task.