What is web analytics? Why is it so important for any organization that have a website and/or a mobile app? Weather it was an e-ecommerce shop, or just an information portal. This is what we are going to explain in this article, and we’ll share with a you some web analytics best practices.

Web analytics is a process that involves the collection, reporting and analysis of website or mobile app data.  The focus is on identifying measures based on your organizational and user goals and using the website data to determine the success or failure of those goals and to drive strategy and improve the user’s experience, as well as your online advertising quality.

Measuring your website content means creating objectives and call-to-action buttons as example and identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success or failures for those objectives and calls-to-action. 

Web Analytics Best Practices

Adapt 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. Is 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. 

Look beyond 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 company 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.

Focus on long-term understanding and 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.

Is Web Analytics Different Than Digital Analytics? Read More Here

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