Why Web Analytics?

Web analytics is the most powerful tool you can use with your website!

That might sound an extravagant claim but there is no other medium where you can measure

• the success of advertising campaigns,
• see how your customers found you and what they were looking for in doing so,
• how they behaved once they had arrived at your place of business
• and much, much more.

Measuring where visitors drop out of the buying process is one the fundamental stats when running any ecommerce site

If your site is an ecommerce or running Pay per click campaigns, then running and using a good web analytics package is a no brainer.  You ignore your website stats at our peril!

 

So where to start.  There are two different technologies to capture web data, log files can analysed or a javaScript tagging solution used.

 

Log file Analysis

Log files have the advantage that historical information is available as far back as the logs are held on the server.  Also, log files will record spider visits from search engines and this is very useful information.  Spiders do not trigger JavaScript so tagging does not collect spider information.

 

Tagging solutions

Tagging is increasingly the preferred solution.  It is more accurate (however no web analysis is ever perfect and it is easy to over-emphasise the importance of accuracy, consistency is much more important.  Also tagging is better able to handle complex dynamic pages, such as those generated in shopping carts.

Whichever technology is chosen, the most important decision is which vendor to use.  Before making a choice, the following check list is useful

1. What is the purpose of the site
2. What do I need to measure –
1. is it very general trends such as traffic levels, where traffic comes from and which keywords are used
2. do I need to more in depth information such as the how my internal search engine is being used
3. do I want to capture data from forms on the site
3. Do I intend to use significant amounts of pay per click or other paid advertising that needs to be carefully monitored
4. Do I need a solution that is scaleable, where is my website going
5. What level of support is available and how important is it going to be to me

 

To pay or not to pay

Many websites now use Google Analytics which of course is free.  Do why pay?

Google Analytics is a powerful mid range solution, it is essentially Urchin which was bought by Google and then rebranded and offered as free service.  The reason Google offers it is mainly to encourage the use of its Adwords service.  The last thing Google wants is for advertisers to lose interest in Adwords because the return on their investment is low.  The way to improve the performance of Adwords (or any pay per click advertising) is to analyse and monitor the results.  So Google wants you to analyse your web stats, and your Adwords campaigns in particular, hence the free offering of Google Analytics.

So as I say why pay?  The main reason I would give is that because it is free, there is little or no support available.  At some point, you will need help, it may be in interpreting results which seem ‘wrong’, it may be in setting the tagging up to collect a particular bit of information.  A paid for product offers this support, it may be offered gratis or it may be costed, but it is available.

Another point to bear in mind is that a tagging solution almost always means that a third party (in this case Google) has total access to everything about how your online business is working, how much money you are taking, when you are taking it, etc etc.  It is business sensitive information and who has access to it should be carefully thought about.

There is also the point that Google could always decide to remove the service or levy a charge, though this does seem very unlikely in the foreseeable future.  While Adwords is working so well and profitably, then it very difficult to see why they would change anything.

The most important point though, is that you analyse your web stats and take the guesswork out of how your site is performing.  Whatever web analytics solutions you chose, make sure you use your stats, and take action based on what they are saying.

28th September 2006