Web analytics can help your marketing plan
Web analytics can do more than track visitors
Web analytics can do more than keep track of how many website visitors you have. It can help you conduct market research, measure the effectiveness of your website (and other business operations) and it can help you improve your customer/client interactions.
Some businesses use their websites to measure the effectiveness of other advertising channels, such as print and broadcast, by measuring the changes in web traffic following a specific campaign or call-to-action. Web analytics can also help business owners spot trends among their customers and potential customers.
Using web analytics to inform your marketing decisions can be a straightforward process. Most analyses (web or otherwise) begin with data collection. Once you have a sufficient number of data points, you can analyze the data and begin to identify trends. Once the data show you what’s happening, you can establish goals and then create a strategy to achieve those goals.
For example, your web traffic statistics might show you that few people click on a special offer on the website, but those who do almost always take advantage of it. In this case, a goal may be to make the special offer “visible” to a larger number of people. The strategy to improve the offer’s visibility may be to create a banner ad for your website’s home page, or a pop-up ad. You might also suspect that your customers would respond to an email that describes the special offer.
Web analytics can help you determine which route your customers prefer – the banner ad on the home page or an email. They can also help you determine how many customers who received the email accepted the special offer versus how many people found the special offer by way of the ad on your home page. Knowing how your customers respond can help you make better marketing decisions about future special offers and ad campaigns.
In the next post, we’ll look at on-site web analytics versus off-site web analytics, and how different elements of your website can serve as data sources. In the mean time, if you’d like more information about web analytics, please contact our Creative Director, Dave Ramsell or give Dave a call at (330) 243-0651 to set up a consultation.
Photo Credit: Bartek Ambrozik, via FreeImages.com
