Web Analytics - A Journey from IT to Marketing

By Nima Asrar Haghighi

Direct Marketing News

Wikipedia defines Web Analytics as "the study of the behaviour of website visitors. In a commercial context, web analytics especially refers to the use of data collected from a web site to determine which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives."

The sophisticated Web Analytics applications that are being used today all originated from the simple log file analyzers that web developers and Webmasters used to track the performance of their servers.

As more people use the Internet to research, socialize and and buy products and services online, Websites have become an important component of doing business. Web analytics applications can prove helpful by providing insight to all levels of business.

Websites have become an integral part of the marketing mix. There are a wide range of strategies marketers can use to send traffic to their sites and monetize that traffic. However, as marketing budgets are limited, companies need to know which media initiatives work best for them. A Web Analytics application has the potential to help marketers make informed decisions on where they need to spend the valuable marketing dollars.

Marketers can benefit from Web Analytics as it helps them track their marketing campaigns, observe visitor behaviour, improve segmentation, identify cross-selling opportunities and measure conversions and return on investment. Web Analytics can also help marketers optimize site content, creative design, media offerings, online merchandising, site navigation and usability and the check out process.

The danger with Web Analytics applications is that they can produce an abundance of data on website usage. This might result in generating an overwhelming list of reports that does not do your business any good. The challenge is to create and focus only on the reports that correspond with strategic business goals and produces actionable data.

So, it is crucial to understand the business goals of your Website and then define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are quantifiable and help decision makers (e.g., IT, marketing, customer service, usability and merchandising) define and measure progress towards those goals.

Depending on your Website business goals (e.g., e-commerce, lead generation, content, support) you might have to decide on different KPIs to measure and act upon. To make sure you get the best out of your Web Analytics make sure you take the following steps:

1. Identify Major Stakeholders

For Web Analytics to help improve the business processes, in addition to top level management who should buy into the importance of Web Analytics and support its initiatives, all major stakeholders need to be identified. Stakeholders are defined as those who have a vital role in the success of the web. They could be online content providers, product merchandisers, web site developers, webmasters, search engine optimizers, customer service, online advertising sales or marketing teams.

2. Define Website Business Goals and KPIs

A Website may have many objectives. It is important for all stakeholders to agree upon business goals and prioritize them. It is only then that you can decide on KPIs that are meaningful and useful to each and every one of them.

Each goal can have a set of clearly defined KPIs that can help stakeholders track their progress over time. So, there might be a need to create custom dashboards that define different KPIs for different Stakeholders to make sure they see those metrics that are most important to them.

3. Measure KPIs

It is crucial to monitor KPIs over time to see if your Website performance and marketing efforts are in-line with business objectives. This will only be possible if you set benchmarks early in the process.

4. Take Action

As with any other marketing channel, it is important to take action based on the performance data. However, as one change can affect multiple KPIs it is important to make sure that any changes to your site and marketing campaigns are done incrementally and in isolation. Before rolling out major changes, it is a good idea to run A/B testing to verify results.

Whether you are engaged in guerrilla marketing, direct marketing, e-mail marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing or affiliate marketing, Web Analytics can help you make the most of your valuable marketing and development budget. However, it is important to look at the trends when you analyze the metrics and not get too tied down with mere numbers. Monitor and measure how KPIs perform over time and make gradual changes and make a commitment to continual improvement. Above all, it is only through developing a Web Analytics culture within your organization that you can make sure you utilize your Website to its maximum potential.


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