I am not involved with any web analytics company so I can express some helpful information here. I have been working with web analytics data since 1996.
Can Web Analytics help my business?
The answer is Yes and No, I'll explain.
Web analytics programmes are stupid they only tell you what you ask them to. They have evolved from server side analytics and generally produce a standard set of results.
- How many visitors to the website - any hit (opening) to any page
- How many unique visitors - any individual during a given time frame
- How many returning visitors - if cookies (small data collections on user’s computer) used
- How many new visitors - provided they have not deleted their cookies
- Where the visitor is from
- How long the visitor is on a page, the site
- Where they enter the site - unique visitors can be tracked as to where they leave the site
Plus quite a few other things.
So all these things come pretty much as standard and can indicate what is happening on your website. The limitation on web analytics programmes is they can tell you who (Hitwise), what and when (WebTrends, NedStats, etc), but not why.
You could say that 'the journey is as important as the entry and the result'.
So while you can get lots of data it may not tell you any more than who came and if they bought. The real problem comes when you need to get tangible knowledge for changes in your marketing or website design. You really need a person who can interpret the data and offer solutions, even if you still lack the journey details.
So web analytics can help and are better than nothing but they do not tell the whole story and you will need a pretty gifted person to read, understand and create new ideas for your business from them.
One last parting shot;
Web Analytics should not be confused with Advertising Metrics; they are in no way the same thing. They look very similar but their specific purpose underwrites how they collect, distribute and define information from your website.
No comments:
Post a Comment