Website Analytics. Unlocking Insights to Boost Your Online Success
What is website analytics?
Website analytics is a set of tools that track user activity. Using reports available in different services, you can find out about the number of visitors, referral sources, and conversion.
The essence of website analytics
The first task for which web analytics was used was to study behavioral factors on the site. Over time, there was a need to study user interactions with mobile applications and social networks.
Today, the capabilities of web analytics are quite extensive. It helps to get a complete picture of the behavior of visitors to digital platforms, including:
- Provides information about the actions of each user.
- Services assign unique IDs, track all steps, calculate the time spent on the site, record the history of visits, determine the source of attraction, and so on.
- The total number of metrics is in the tens.
- Allows you to receive relevant data in real-time.
- Statistics are refreshed every few minutes, which is crucial for evaluating the site’s content from the users’ perspective.
- A/B testing is one of the most effective web analytics tools. It allows you to compare different versions of proposed changes and determine the best approach to enhance site performance. You can test everything from individual buttons to entire sections of the website.
To collect information about the actions of site visitors, special tracking codes are installed:
- Tags are pieces of JavaScript code used by web analytics services to determine visits, clicks, scrolls, form filling, and other indicators. They also allow you to track IP addresses, geolocation, and user browser parameters.
- Cookies are small files with data that the browser transfers between the visitor and the site during the current session. When the user returns to the site, cookies recognize him and record new actions.
The analytics system displays the collected information on dashboards. For each metric, a separate board is created, displaying the distribution of the audience by segments, its activity in different periods, geography, age and gender characteristics of users, and so on.
However, it’s important not to rely entirely on the absolute accuracy of analytics data. Factors like user-installed ad blockers and deleted cookies can skew the results, leading to a less accurate view of actual site performance.
Goals and objectives
The website owner must understand how the audience perceives the content posted on the site: whether users spend enough time on the pages, whether they perform target actions, which sections and materials they like, and which ones they quickly leave. Web analytics provides a complete picture of visitor behavior, based on which you can make changes and achieve improved performance.
Specific steps to optimize the resource taking into account the analysis results:
- Creating an effective sales page that presents the most popular products.
- Simplifying the site structure, adding cross-links, and other measures to improve user comfort.
- Checking search traffic by an SEO specialist, eliminating redundant keywords, and adding missing ones.
Analytics tools can confirm or refute the site owner’s doubts regarding the location of buttons, advertising links, and other interface elements. However, the main task that web analytics services are designed to solve is a general assessment of the user audience and technical characteristics of the site.
Studying the behavior of site visitors includes:
- Collecting and analyzing information about users and their activity: how much time they spent on the site, how many pages they viewed, what regions they live in, what gender and age they are, what devices they use to access the Internet, and so on.
- Identifying traffic sources involves understanding how visitors arrived at the site—whether they clicked on an ad, followed a link from search results, or directly entered the website address in their browser.
- Semantic core audit: what key phrases the site is promoted by, do they meet the needs of the target audience?
- A detailed analysis of website traffic involves evaluating the resource to identify its most popular components. At this stage, specialists gain insights into metrics like page depth, bounce rates, user navigation across pages, and more.
- Determining the number of users who performed target actions: how many people clicked on a link, filled out a feedback form, bought a product, or subscribed to a newsletter.
Analysis of the technical characteristics of the site consists of:
- determining pages indexed and ignored by search robots;
- identifying the most effective keywords and the frequency of their use on the site pages;
- searching for broken links that lead to a non-existent page or return the 404 error code.
Understandable About Web Analytics. Now Everything Is Clear!
Website analytics tools
Services collect data from web resources and distribute it across different dashboards. The site owner gets the opportunity to use this information to optimize indicators.
There are two types of tools used in website analytics services:
- Counters are essential for collecting data on on-site visits and user activity. The gathered information is stored on the program’s server and can be accessed by the webmaster through their account.
- Log analyzers are tools that extract data from log files, which track the sequence of actions taken by site visitors. This data is then made available to the webmaster through their account for further analysis.
The analysis results are leveraged to refine the website’s content and design, as well as to tweak the advertising strategy. For example, based on these insights, decisions may be made to reallocate the budget, discontinue underperforming ads, or explore new promotion channels.
Types
Web resources are assessed to solve different problems, so there are several categories of web analytics.
Depending on the goals of the analysis and the results
SEO analytics to determine current traffic and find opportunities to increase it
As a result of the study, weak points in the semantic core, site content, and link profile are detected. SEO analytics is carried out using Google Analytics, SEO audit services such as Serpstat, Rush-Analytics, and others, as well as log analyzers that allow you to identify technical errors in the site.
We can say that SEO optimization and SEO audits are separate sections of site analytics, in which the subject of study and evaluation are engagement indicators, volumes of materials, external links, interlinking and other characteristics.
Behavioral analytics for audience segmentation and forecasting the actions of different user groups
This type involves dividing into groups by age, gender, income level, hobbies, and so on, as well as predicting the behavior of site visitors. Based on the results of such analysis, adjustments are made to the communication strategy.
End-to-end analytics
It is carried out to identify the channels and campaigns that are most effective in achieving the main KPI. Various ways of attracting users to the website are analyzed and the best channels are determined in terms of results. For e-commerce, the key indicators are profit and return on marketing investments, for businesses with a long transaction or a large number of transactions and good LTV – CPL / CAC. That is the cost of attracting a lead or client. For the media – subscriptions and user returns.
Let’s say you placed two advertisements for two products. End-to-end analytics will help you understand which of them is more profitable. To obtain data on the target audience, you need ads for its different segments.
By combining the collected information with the numbers from the counters, you will receive a detailed report that will reflect all stages of promotion, from the launch of an advertising campaign and the budget for buying clicks to ROI from them.
The three types discussed above represent comprehensive website analytics because the objects of study are:
- SEO indicators that affect the growth of organic traffic;
- social and behavioral metrics for better communication with the audience;
- marketing metrics and profitability for assessing profitability.
What metrics are tracked using web-analytics
Channels that bring traffic
Website web analytics allows you to determine where users come from and which channels are the most effective. Let’s say you place external publications on third-party resources and contextual advertising on Google. Thanks to web analytics tools, you will understand which source brings the largest number of visitors. In addition, you will learn which audience segments make purchases or leave requests more often than others.
User characteristics
Audience research gives a clear idea of the gender, age, place of residence, interests, and income level of your clients. This helps to competently build communication with the target audience.
Web analytics provides information about the devices from which users access the site, and not only about the type (computer, smartphone, tablet, TV), but also about specific models, operating systems, and screen sizes. Such information is important for the layout of the site and its adaptation to mobile gadgets.
User behavior
To improve the efficiency of the site, it is useful to know which pages are popular, how much time people spend in specific sections of the resource, what materials they read, what buttons they click, and so on.
Technical indicators
Web analytics systems collect basic data regarding the operation of the site. For example, the service records serious errors, measures download speed, monitors the correct display of pages in different browsers, and so on.
Conversions
Web analytics allows you to track the ratio of site visitors and applications you receive. To do this, the system counts the number of completed forms in which people entered their data and clicked “Submit”, the number of clicks on the email address or its copies, and the number of calls received (if call tracking is enabled). These actions that turn users into buyers or leads are called macro-conversions.
To complete the picture, you should also monitor micro-conversions, that is, all the steps a visitor takes before making a purchase. These include filling the basket, filling in fields in the order form, clicking on the “Contact us” button, and so on. This data helps to understand at what stage most users stop interacting with the site and leave it without making a purchase.
Data collected using web analytics tools can become the basis for adjusting the structure, design, and content of the site, as well as for abandoning ineffective traffic acquisition channels.
Errors in website analytics
Services allow you to conclude the effectiveness of the resource, based on the reports they generate. We adjust the site and advertising strategy, trusting the numerous data that the system collects. However, they cannot be reliable for several reasons.
The error is explained by the methods of obtaining information about users used by analytics systems. Counters collect information about site visitors through cookies. These files allow you to save data about what resources a person visits, what actions he performs, and so on. When visiting a site, the counter extracts the necessary information about the visitor from the cookie.
