Explaining
Web Analytics
How to Analyze a
Website for Effect
This quick Internet
marketing tutorial
covers what web analytics are and how you can use
them to improve traffic generation, get better
conversions on your business website, and more.
Take time to read and learn
more about the process. What are web analytics and
and how can you apply this principle to your
website? Here is a brief explanation and so
practical uses for this sometimes misunderstood
section on promotion.
Description:
Web analytics refers to the
measurement, collection and analysis of Internet
data for the purpose of optimizing and
understanding the use of the web. They can either
be on the site or off.
For Online Businesses and
Commercial Websites
On-site web analytics
involves the analysis of your own website in order
to determine how visitors navigate through your
site. This usually involves an analysis of landing
pages, drivers and conversions of the site towards
a purchase. In the commercial or business site
context, this kind of analysis provides performance
indicators of a website or a marketing campaign.
Off-site analytics involves a
look at the Internet as a whole and the potential
as well as the visibility of a website to the
Internet community. Historically though, the term
web analytics has come to refer to on-site
measurements of a particular web site.
How to Use the
Technology
The use of web analytics
technologies involves either collecting data stored
in log files on the web server or by use of page
tagging where JavaScript is used to notify a server
that a page request by a browser has occurred.
This data can then be
collected to produce web traffic data. These are
the main ways of data collection. There are other
ways which include e-mail response rates, lead
generation information, click heat mapping among
others. Web log analysis software is used to
collect the data from web logs and generate
extensive statistics.
Dodging the Search
Engines
The emergence of search
engines means that log analyzers have to ignore
requests from spiders and track cookies from visits
instead. Page tagging helps to resolve some
inaccuracies of log file analysis by use of web
counters.
Website
Cookies
Assigning of cookies is also
another important element of present web analytics
services. Cookies help to uniquely identify a
visitor and any subsequent visits. Due to their
varied uses between websites, the quality of data
collected and reported from them is affected.
Alternatively, data may also be collected by a
third-party server by use of DNS lookups to
identify IP addresses. This method however has the
risk of losing data if DNS lookups fail or are
delayed for too long.
Whew!! And Now, the Easy
Route to Web Analytics
Today, commonly available web
analytics third-party software provides highly
customizable enterprise-level analysis of systems
by offering real-time and historical data that can
even be visualized with graphs and charts helping
marketers and site designers to optimize their
business sites.
Depending on which web
analytics software you choose, this method of
analyzing your statistics can help you to improve
conversion rates and track where are how you are
generating traffic, among other things. Discovering
how to analyze is one thing, using the information
is another - Take time to look at your web
analytics to see where your site is and where it's
headed. You'll be happy you did!
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Websites
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