Web Analytics

What exactly does Analytics tell you? 
If you think it is basic common sense. It shows you with proofs, what you are doing right and what you are not doing right, what is working and not working, when and where it is working and not working. It is different science altogether. The accurate analytics helps you in improving the system,  pivot the model,  dropping the dead features. There are two types of analytics.

•  Web analytics
•  Back end data analytics

You may  be puzzled by second component and it's significance.  When you bootstrap your firm you probably start with Google analytics and you won't have any back end data analytics,  till you grow big    (probably after few years). We simply explain each of these types.

Web analytics

It simply tells the customer behavior on your website and effectiveness of marketing.
"Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of a web site. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print or broadcast advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how traffic to a website changes after the launch of a new advertising campaign." - from Wikipedia

 

Choosing the Web Analytics soul mate

As a start up when you are building MVP (minimum viable product)  choosing Google Analytics is very good choice. You can get basic information very easily by including simple java script in the webpage. Once you are expanding, you can think of choosing Analytics soul mate. There are many options, few well known vendors are Google, Yahoo, Omniture, Webtrends, Affinium NetInsight, Lyris HQ. Kiss metrics.
The decision is based on usability, functionality, technical easiness, response, total cost of ownership. Please do read the important post on the same here

The Basic information

• Bounce rates: What needs to be improved, how early they are leaving
• Exit pages: Where users are leaving the website.
• Page views: How many are commming to your website
• Repeated visits: How many are coming back
• Conversion rate and revenue: How many are buying finally
• Social media information
• Device used: Specific browsers, mobiles
• Revenue per keyword: ROI on Google adsense keyword    
• Revenue per landing page
• Promotions and campaigns effectiveness
• Geo location of visitors
• Number of drops after filling in shopping cart.

Apart from that competative analysis is also importent accept,  it will help you to know where your competatrots are doing better than you.

Resources

Please do refer below book and links which gives great insight into Analytics world.
Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity
Occam's Razor Blog
Wikipedia article on Web analytics

We will cover the sales data analytics in our next post.