Marketing Advisor Blog

5 starter tips on web analytics data

A who, what, where, why, and when formula works perfectly for defining how to correctly gauge web analytic data.

Web analytics, the tracking of your customers on your site, has been made more important on the web in the past 10 years as more companies want more details. Just like search engine optimized pages are discovered by buyers who look over and consider your offer, web analytics lets you discover new buyers and see exactly some of the things they want.

Here are 5 quick starter tips using the tried and true formula of the 5 Ws.

An introduction to testing landing pages

A landing page is a page on your website that Internet users land on after clicking on a link. That can be a link in a search engine ad, a link in an electronic newsletter, a banner ad, etc.

The success of an online campaign depends on many elements, and the landing page is definitely one of them. If an Internet user takes the time to click on your ad (ensuring that they do so is another factor for success), you should welcome them with open arms in a user-friendly manner and immediately offer the information that they are looking for.

Online marketing isn’t an exact science and there is no such thing as the ultimate recipe for the perfect landing page.

Web Analytics: the difference between metrics and KPIs (and why KPIs are crucial)

To analyze and improve the results of your online marketing efforts, you need Web Analytics and workable parameters regarding the impact of your strategies on your online business and even your business in general. 

One of the main tasks in Web Analytics is to define KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. These are not the same as Web Analytics metrics.
 
- Metrics are simple measurement parameters regarding one aspect of your website or online communications such as the number of unique visitors, the number of page views per visitor, or the average time a visitor is staying on your web site.

- Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are also metrics but with some extras. They are defined by management and serve a business purpose. They have a meaning in terms of the company and its activities and provide insights and decision criteria for management. KPIs are always focused on taking action.

Five good reasons to use Web Analytics

Are there still companies that don’t use Web Analytics? Yes, there are. However, with the arrival of free Web Analytics tools (should we mention the importance of Google here?), every day more companies start using Web Analytics.

Many companies however still do not get past plain old measuring web site traffic: pageviews, unique visitors, entrance and exit pages, number of visits per visitor, you name it.

And of course Web Analytics is much more that that. We identified ten good reasons to use Web Analytics.

Below you find the first five ones. The other five will be for a later post.

Kickstart your online marketing testing

Online marketing testing, if done properly, can be a great step towards reducing the guesswork in online marketing. Online marketing testing and tracking can give you accurate and reliable answers to almost any marketing question you can image.

The tracking and testing approach should pave the path towards an online marketing decision making process based on facts, not convictions. 

Though this approach might seem pretty straightforward, online marketeers often ask me the question how to get started with online marketing testing, because this approach can be quite overwhelming.

The following simple guidelines should help you out.

Email marketers want to improve ROI by better integrating email marketing and Web Analytics

According to preliminary data of our ongoing email marketing survey, the main email marketing investment priority for marketers for 2010 is finding a better way to integrate email marketing data with their customer relationship management platform (see graphic).

The integration with Web Analytics ranks second in the list of priorities. On the third spot we find ‘a solution to clean and integrate email lists’, followed by ‘a (better) email marketing tool’.