Web analytics as a basis to understanding your online business

Most online businesses use a Web Analytics tool, and Google Analytics seem to be the (free!) leader in digital data analytics. Maybe you run an online business and don’t use an analytics platform yet? If so, you’re missing a very important tool that can help your online presence and web performance! In this article, we’ll detail why a web analytics tool is crucial for your business.

You have business objectives? You need to measure them!

You took time to define a great digital strategy and set up very detailed objectives, so you are going to need to measure your online activity to know if you’ve reached your goals. Whether your objectives are online sales, leads collection or visits, a web analytics tool will give you real-time figures on what is happening on your website.

With Google Analytics for example, you will be able to configure your specific goals, to control if you reach them but – most importantly – how you achieved them (or how you fell short). You will be able to know which campaigns or traffic sources were the most successful, which landing pages convert better, which pages of your website generate the most interesting traffic, etc…
This is a clear advantage the digital world has compared to offline business: you can measure almost everything. Don’t miss this opportunity!

Is your strategy producing results? If not, adapt!

Web analytics give you great insights on what’s happening on your website and if your actions are giving the expected results. As you can follow results in real time, it is easy for you to detect which are the best performing actions you took and focus on these or invest in them. On the other side, poor performing actions need to be reviewed and adapted. The good news is that you don’t have to wait until the end of the period to measure, and you can adapt to the market response on-the-fly.

This data is not only useful for your campaigns but also to improve the website itself. You will be able to detect that some pages have a very high bounce rate and adapt them so that they are more attractive to your site’s visitors. You will be able to track visitor flow on your website, detect where visitors abandon and work on improving their progression to the conversion you set up.

Another important point is that web analytics will also give you insights on your visitors’ profile: what’s their age, their gender, if they use mobile, tablet or desktop, where they come from, and other details. Your digital customers may be different from who you think they are. Again, knowing all this will help you to adapt your online business in order to offer them an improved experience.

Need help to design your strategy? Web analytics will help!

What if your eCommerce doesn’t have a clearly designed strategy? If you already have some analytical data on your website traffic, take a closer look at it. It will be very helpful for you to help define how you want to orientate your business strategy.

Evaluating traffic source impact on your website will guide your advertising spend and investment decisions: is it worth for you to invest in social networks? Or should you focus only on emailing? Or affiliate marketing? Usually, companies use a mix of various promotion options but knowing specific past conversion rates will make it easier for you to decide how to allocate your marketing budget.

What if you have identified an important referral website for your activity? It is surely worth it getting in touch with them in order to setup a closer collaboration which could benefit both businesses.

Have you noticed that some of your website pages rank well in Google and convert traffic efficiently? It may be a sign that you should develop a content strategy based on the type of content published on theses pages.

Have you detected numerous and interesting traffic from a specific country abroad? Well, you can try to develop a particular market by creating an adapted version of your website: language, delivery options, specific products or events, and other types of localization for those consumers.

Developing a knowledge and understanding of your website traffic will certainly help you to define and reach your goals. As these web analytics tools are very complete and manage a large amount of data, the key to efficiency is to define the most important KPIs for your activity. If you don’t know how to define them or want assistance in configuring your web analytics tools, do not hesitate to contact us. At All Around, we are experts in analytics and improving website and business performance online.

Alexis

Author

Client Success Manager

Alexis is our Client Success Manager at All Around. She is a Digital Marketing Specialist and Manager with 15+ years of experience in international markets. She is a dedicated client partner, ready to take businesses to the next level, with vast expertise in digital strategy, operations, project management, reporting, budgeting and negotiation.