Every time a visitor arrives on your website, he leaves behind him a trail of information about how and where he found your site, which pages he visited, how long he spent on them, the time of day and day of week he visited. And that is in addition to the information about transactions if the site is ecommerce enabled.

Web Analytics is the study of this data and its interpetation. It enables informed decisions to be made based on real information, not just guesswork and it is invaluable in deciding how to spend promotional budgets and how to develop the site to improve usability and conversions.

Good use of web stats is like giving your marketing department 20 20 vision. Ignore them and your marketers are working blindfold!

Don’t ignore the best marketing and business information source you have!

Web stats are:

• Invaluable
• Not boring
• Easy to understand – at least we make them so
• Provide you with a powerful competitive edge
• Are used by all serious ecommerce sites

 

Introduction to Web Analytics using Google Analytics

This course is led by Sally Kavanagh, who is Google Analytics Individual Qualified

Getting the web analytics process right is key to running a web site effectively. 

If the site is transactional, ie an ecommerce site, or if you are running a pay per click campaigns, one could go further and say it is madness not to take account of what your web stats have to tell you.

Atracks half day course in getting the Web Analytics process right has now been expanded to cover a full day. Not only does this allow material to be covered in more depth, it also allows greater student participation. This takes the form of exercises as well as discussion of specific examples of how the web analtyics process applies to students’ websites

If you have ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data that you are confronted with, or if you simply don’t know where to start, then this is the course for you!

We shall use Google Analytics as the source of sample data on the course but the software you use to gather and interrogate data is largely irrelevant to the web analytics process. The Managing Director wants a well constructed and designed Excel spreadsheet that collates the different metrics that interests him. He is unlikely to be interested in the print out of a report from the web stats package. So we shall be mainly looking at what to do with the data. Collecting it is really just the easy bit. 

It does not matter if you do not use Google Analytics to gather data. If you are using the stats package provided by your hosting company, then you are likely to find that either it provides very similar information to Google Analytics or that it provides only very limited data. If the data provision is similar, then the fact that your data is coming from your own stats package will make little difference. If your stats provision is poor, the course will show you the level of provision you should expect and suggest ways to achieve an acceptable level of data provision.

 

Course contents

What is web analytics and what can it deliver

How data is collected – a brief revue of the different technologies available, their advantages and limitations.

Setting up the web analytics account, including basic filtering to exclude internal traffic and permitting access to different users

Planning the process – as with any process, thinking through what the goals are and how they are to be achieved is the vital first step

Overview of what infomation Google Analytics provides and how to access and export it

Defining key performance indicators for you site – we shall look at examples of KPIs that apply to many different sites without losing sight of the need to make KPIs site specific

Kaizen – setting up a cycle of continuous improvement ensures action results from the information provided by the stats – if no action every happens why bother to measure anything in the first place!

Web analytics and search, we look at both PPC and natural search data

Web analtyics and usability – what can web analtyics say about how well your website is meeting visitor needs and expectations

Web analytics and performance – is your website achieving its goals?

Presenting information – ensuring information is presented in a way that ensures it is acted up

Case Studies – real examples of how web data has been used to make sites more effective, more search engine visible and more profitable.

 

Who should attend

Webmasters – if you are responsible for running a website, then a knowledge of web analytics is vital.

Online Marketers – knowing how to measure the effects of campaigns brings a whole new meaning to return on investment

PPC advertisers – if you are running any level of pay per click advertisers, then knowing what is delivering the customers and what is delivering nothing is something of a ‘no brainer’.

 Web analytics is not just for ecommerce sites. Every web master should know about and be measuring what is happening on his site.