Focus on web analytics: an introduction

When understood and used correctly web analytics provides an invaluable tool for lowering bounce rates, completing conversions and maintaining customer loyalty.

By Martina Mercer

Web Analytics, whether free or paid for, is a tool not to be ignored for any business that needs to improve. Although it can seem daunting at the outset, within just a few hours users can identify reasons why shoppers abandon baskets while browsing, bounce rates are high for particular pages and how to maintain visitor interest.

It is basically a tool for crawling inside the customer’s mind to discover what makes them buy and depending on budget you can access as much or as little as you need.

Assessing Impact

Web Analytics measures your effectiveness online, instead of the outdated method of simply counting how many hits your website has, analytics show details that give you an extraordinary insight, you will learn:

•    How the visitor arrived at your site
•    Which page the visitor landed on
•    Where the visitor came from
•    How long the visitor stayed on each page
•    What interrupted the process and made the visitor leave
•    How many visitors were converted into customers?
•    How many unique visitors you received
•    The times when visitors are more like to visit your site

With paid analytics you can also delve even deeper as some software allows you to estimate the sex, age and demographic of the visitor.

Acting on Analytics

With all of this information you can make changes to ensure you not only attract the consumer but keep them. You can also allocate marketing budgets effectively to invest in the methods that are bringing the best return.

For example:

Where the visitor came from

In the past we were only shown that a visitor had arrived but now we can see which campaigns are the most effective, for instance a visitor could come from:

•    Social networks such as Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn
•    Another site where you have reviews or guest posts
•    An online advertisement
•    A search
•    A link from a friend

They could have even inputted your website address manually suggesting they have arrived at your site after viewing offline marketing such as sales letters, brochures or vouchers.

If you find your most effective method is social media you can then pull resources from other less result driven campaigns such as guest posts and invest in a strategy that will bring a god return.

Keeping the customer close

One of the biggest factors that sets eCommerce websites apart for the customer is the user experience. This is why big retailers such as John Lewis and Tesco focus so heavily on the multichannel experience.

The multichannel experience allows a user to access their account and services on any device throughout one particular shopping experience. They could begin by browsing online on the PC over breakfast, add items to a basket from a smartphone on the daily commute and complete by either picking up in store or checking out on a computer at work.

This seamless integration is proven to increase customer loyalty as it not only offers the ultimate convenience but makes the consumer feel valued and appreciated.

Analytics will help you to determine how user friendly your site is, how attractive (or repellent) your design is to visitors and how well your content is leading the consumer from one page to another.

Daniel Lucht the research director of Research Farm explained to me why consumer analysis is so important for eCommerce this year, I asked him:  What do you think retailers will focus on in the next six months?

I think that technology has developed very quickly over the past decade and this year retailers will focus more on collecting data and using it to increase sales, such as the loyalty schemes. Unfortunately 2013 seems to be another tough year, as the news of Jessops, HMV and others has proved, however I think those that embrace multichannel retailing, loyalty schemes and discounting will do better than the rest.

Lowering Bounce Rates

A bounce rate indicates when a visitor has landed on the site and clicked away, suggesting that something on your site deterred them and prompted them to look elsewhere. Analytics will show the pages in which visitors clicked away and how long they stayed.

Understanding the time and destination can help you to determine the factor that turned the visitor off. This could be due to a few reasons:

1)    Boring copy and content
2)    Too busy design
3)    Lack of clear instruction
4)    Difficult to navigate
5)    Quality of images
6)    Price of products
7)    Tone of voice

Bear in mind that every service you invest in for your website should give you an incredible return, whether this is lowering bounce rates, leading people to contact or buy or encouraging sharing and engagement.

With analytics, you won’t know the exact words that put people off but you can gain an overview, you can then adjust your design, copy or layout and assess analytics after launch to see if the changes make a difference.

Once you step inside the minds of your target market with analytics you can encourage them to buy.