Web Analytics basics
Want to learn some best practices for Web Analytics?
As a small reminder, Web analytics is the collection, reporting, and analysis of website data.
Web analytics can strongly support the qualitative research and testing finding. Some best practices to keep in mind related to this field are:
- Encourage a data-driven environment for decision making.
After collecting the relevant data to answer whether you have met (or fail to meet) your goals, find out what you can do to improve your KPIs. Are there high-value content (based on user feedback to the website) that is not getting any traffic? Find out why through user path analysis or engagement analysis of top sources for that page. Leverage the experimentation & testing tools to try out different solutions and find the best placement that generates the most engagement for that page. - Avoid only providing traffic reports. Reporting about visits, pageviews, top sources, or top pages only skims the surface. Large numbers can be misleading; just because there is more traffic or time spent on site doesn’t mean that there is success. Reporting these numbers is largely tactical; after all, what do 7 million visits have to do with the success of your program?
- Always provide insights with the data. Reporting metrics to your stakeholders with no insights or tie-ins to your business or user goals misses the point. Make the data relevant and meaningful by demonstrating how the website data shows areas of success and of improvement on your site.
- Avoid being snapshot-focused in reporting. Focusing on visits or looking only within a specific time period doesn’t capture the richer and more complex web experiences that are happening online now. Pan-session metrics, such as visitors, user-lifetime value, and other values that provide longer-term understanding of people and users, allow you to evaluate how your website has been doing as it matures and as it interacts with visitors, especially the returning ones.
- Communicate clearly with stakeholders. Be consistent in the information you provide, know your audience, and know the weaknesses of your system and disclose them to your stakeholders.
Well, that is all for Web Analytics. We hope you got a basic understanding of it and can now learn to use if for your business!!
Source: https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/web-analytics.html
Image: http://www.zoomyourtraffic.com/blog/web-site-analytics-helps-drive-more-traffic/
