Web Analytics for Successful Online Marketing

By Gary Finn

Account Executive

Marketers that leverage the power of their web analytics program truly reap the benefits and make full potential of their online marketing campaigns.

What is Web Analytics?
Put simply, web analytics involves the identification of a website visitor, analysis of the reason for visiting and tracking user movements through the website until the user departs.

There are two main approaches to collecting web analytics data:
1. Logfile analysis, reads the log files from the web server which records all your sites transactions.

2. A newer method, Page tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser.

Either approach provides a clear picture of your site’s performance. As a result, strategies can be devised to maximise sales, improve content creation, increase length of time user spends on site and much more.

Not surprisingly, web analytics data can provide invaluable information to marketers who wish to improve and target their online marketing campaigns. Notable information that may be of interest includes:
• The keyword phrase used to arrive at your site
• The unique IP address. Therefore, identifying the country where your websites’ visitors originated
• The entry and exit pages
• The length of time a visitor spends at your website

For example, from this data, marketers can improve their keyword buys on PPC networks and target specific keywords for high organic search engine rankings. The identification of entry and exit pages and keyword phrases used can help fine tune landing page testing as well as identifying which keywords are converting or driving the most sales/traffic to your site. 

Consequently, the integration of this data to any marketing campaign, both online and offline, will lead to better performing websites, online marketing campaigns and ultimately, user experiences.

However, it is important to remember to track and evaluate the impact of all campaign elements whether it is display advertising, email, paid or organic search engine marketing.

In conclusion, the benefits of web analytics to any online marketing campaign cannot be understated. It is via web analytics that marketers can determine which keyword phrases are of interest to its target market, and therefore of interest to the content creation team; which pages are visited most, which products are most popular and even what the profile of the target visitor is.

Familiarise yourself with your web analytics program, analyse and read the results frequently and incorporate these learning’s into your campaigns for a successful marketing strategy.