The top 5 pillars of web analytics

The top 5 pillars of web analytics

1. Objectives for visitors

What do you want your visitors to do? Every business sets goals and objectives that it wants

visitors to achieve. These goals usually reflect on how well the business is doing because when

combined, all visitors take it closer to the bottom line. The most typical end result that web

analytics assesses is the rate at which visitors turn to customers. Even though not every visitor will fulfill this objective, it is important to lay down clear and achievable goals so that when the analytical process begins, the webmaster knows what is to be measured and which metrics should be used to measure this goal. Enticing visitors to achieve this goal is also not possible until the business knows what action it is looking forward to.

2. Tracking conversion

The conversion is important part of web Analytics. Why do you design a website? Why do you

want visitors to be directed to it? Why do you want to run an analysis of its performance? The

answer to all these questions is to turn visitors to customers. The conversion rate determines

how well people perform the action you expected them to.

In other words, how many visitors fulfilled the objective defined above.

Keeping track of the conversion rate is very important because it distinguishes between two main concepts, i.e. how much traffic passed through your website and how much of it converted. There is a stark difference in both, and novice webmasters who fail to make this

distinction, fall into a trap. Assuming that your website is becoming famous and receiving a lot of attention based on increased traffic is quite meaningless because the same can also result in an increased bounce rate. Therefore, unless the conversion rate is tracked, and it reveals an increasing and satisfying number, the performance of a website cannot be gauged.

3. Explain abandonment rates

After tracking conversion rates, if you discover that the figure is significantly low, it means that

visitors are not performing the desired actions. There are many entry and exit points/pages on a website, all of which are watched by web analysts because a business’s goal of conversion can be achieved at any of these pages.

It would not be incorrect to think of these pages like virtual customer touch points. If a business

succeeds at attracting a visitor enough for him to make a purchase, the touch point has achieved the objective. However, if it does not, the visitor abandons his search and exits the

website. In this situation, a web analyst should discover and explain why this visitor behaved as such.  Effective web analysis is able to tell where customers drop off the most. This point of the website is identified as a problem area and it is then improved with corrective measures.

4. Identify bounce rates

While abandonment rates represent the fraction of internet traffic that drops off after exploring the website to an extent, bounce rate represents the chunk of visitors who leave

immediately, i.e. after seeing only one page.

5. Determine cost per acquisition Cost per

Acquisition shows the expenses you incur for converting one visitor to a customer. Knowing how much you spend is essential because inadequate expenditure is also a big cause of low conversion rates because you have not put enough on the website for people to be

attracted. On the other hand, if your cost per acquisition is too high and conversion rates are still low, this indicates that the problem

lays somewhere else and the web analyst should look further for the answer.