Web Analytics In E-Business Success
Since the dawn of information technology in the twentieth century, computers have aggressively filtrated into every aspect of our lives, particularly the business world.
Due to its (computers) accurate and efficient response, as well as its vast storage capabilities, it has enabled businesses to run more efficient, be more accurate, and ultimately more profitable. Since the introduction of the internet and web surfing it has given birth to e-businesses.
Web Analytics
Web analytics provides companies with useful information that can assist companies in many critical areas of business. Namely marketing strategy, new product design, applying and creating new business processors, as well as strategic business planning .Web analytical research has become the core centre of business strategy.
Web analytics positions companies close to the market, and using analytical forecasts allows companies to make necessary amendments to accommodate the shifts in the marketing trend. Having the competitor’s edge and being at the forefront of new business initiatives is achievable using web analytics in e-business.
Web Analytics Positions companies to…
Be able to identify their target market. Be able to identify the need in the market, and to create products and services to meet that need. Have access to vast research material and data which varies into different categories. It is therefore a vital and useful marketing and research tool that empowers companies to be driven by the needs of the customer base, always delivering the right product at the right time, in the right place.
Understanding E-Business
The Internet has now become a tool for businesses to provide services to customers. The buying and selling of products and services electronically, and communicating with business partners. E-Business initiatives require the same principles for management as in the offline world in order to succeed.
With strategic planning, execution and analysis, businesses will be able to achieve their online business goals. It has been predicted that 50 percent of all e-business initiatives will fail. That is why using web analytics in e-business is crucial. Companies must therefore measure ROI ( Return On Investment ) based on results driven by KPI’s ( Key Performance Indicators ) which can help improve the e-commerce objectives, by serving as warning signs to inform when things are going wrong.
Companies have realised the importance of doing a closed loop analysis of their programs by using web analytics in e-business, to know exactly how their programs are performing.
Web analytics positions companies to run more profitably by enabling better strategic operations which will reduce cost of sales, increase brand awareness, and assist in improving customer satisfaction ratings. Through doing research into how best to maximise the use of web initiatives, you will be able to identify the target market, measure results, and have regular access to this information, so as to allow execution to be tuned. Alterations can be made as to how data will be stored and how the company’s decision makers can use it strategically to gain advantage. This will allow executives to maximize benefits and minimize losses.
Choosing User-Friendly Web Analytics Products
For the average person finding a suitable web analytics product is probably not the easiest task considering first of all if one knows what web analytics does.
We all are not IT geeks or webmasters and even businesses sometimes struggle to find suitable web analytics aid especially small businesses and those on a shoestring budget who might not have a lot of money for complicated and advanced analytics tools. Choosing a web analytics product wisely becomes vital but being informed is the starting point.
Starting With The Facts
HitsLink is proven to be the most reliable and cheapest web analytics provider although its opposition, Webtrends and Goolge are just as efficient. But what are web analytics? Web Analytics can be seen as a study of online behavior necessary to improve it.
There are two types, on-site and off-site. Off-site web analytics are measurements of a websites potential audience on the internet as a whole whilst On-site web analytics measure the performance of ones own website.
Advantages of Incorporating Web Analytics
Web analytics products are mainly used to improve and manage a website. When applied to a website it generates a report on all activity and transactions of visitors that occur within the particular website.
Its visitor tracker function serves to be the greatest advantage of this tool in the sense that it helps in the decision making process and eventually to make the website more user-friendly. The information received by the tracker can be used to identify whether visitors are entering the site at all and at which point they drop off.
The purpose of determining the visitors’ behavior is important to observe whether marketing is effective or not. The visitor tracker therefore is not only used to determine the amount of visitors a site has but also understanding why visitors are attracted to the site and also how.
More specifically, this study of behavior done by the visitor tracker can help a company to improve marketing in various ways. They are able to tell what keywords brought the visitor to their site, the navigation paths the visitor followed, what webpage’s are interesting and those that are not and finally how marketers can now improve and adapt their marketing strategy.
The focus is put on considering the visitor and not merely receiving statistics but using it not only to benefit the company but also the client.
Why Choose HitslinkWeb Analytics
Hitslink is an easy to use free service with great features and for companies testing the analytics waters could be the safest option considering it is absolutely free. Meaning that one is able to play around with the product and understanding the way it works before committing to an expensive maybe more advanced aid.
Not to say that Hitslink is not top of the range, with Hitslink analytics you will be able to compare the behavior and profitability of visitors referred from ads, keywords, search engines, and emails, and gain insight into how to improve your site overall.
What Is Google Analytics Value All About?
Google offers a free service called Google analytics that extracts information from websites and generate statistics about the visitors to that website. The original designers of this program were Urchin Software cooperation who called it ‘Urchin on demand’. Google bought the company in 2005 and renamed the program ‘Google Analytics’.
Google is still selling the software ‘Urchin on demand’ and released the sixth edition in April 2008, sales are conducted through agents that offer a value added service. Google Analytics is available free to all users, even if they do not advertise through Google however some generous limitations apply to users that do not advertise through Google.
Once these limits have been reached there are nominal service fees charged for the use of this software.
How it works for online benefit
Users are required to add a Google Analytics Tracking Code, also referred to as a ‘page tag’ to every page on their website. This tracking code loads a file from the Google server and links between the website and the users account number.
This tracking code also installs cookies used to store anonymous information regarding visitor recurrence, time straps and referrers on visitor’s computers. Data is processed hourly and data processing is only a few hours behind real time.
There has been many concerns raised about making confidential information available to Google, giving them access to sales figures, rates and advertisement costs but inevitably you will need to feed some company with this information in order to have detailed reporting available when needed.
What google analytics can do?
Visitors can arrive at a website via a link on e-mail, search engines, pay per click advertising or digital documents; Google analytics keeps track of this and delivers detailed reports on this information to the client.
Pay per click campaigns on Google can be intensively monitored and conversions to sales easily determined. Sales conversions are monitored by gathering information from the funnel pages on a website, these are the pages leading directly to a sale.
This can give you vital information about abandoned sales, indicating possible problems in the purchasing process. This program is very flexible and can run reports weekly, monthly or any other periods that you may select.
How you can benefit
Most companies would not have the professional resources to do website analysis in-house, this would however be extremely time consuming and would require a large amount of disk space. By using Google Analytics you can save time and money. Google analytics can help you determine which ads are not generating many sales and which ads are performing very well. By canceling the ads not delivering the desired return on investment your company will save considerably.
Ads that are leading traffic to your website with a high conversion rate might then be further optimized to capitalize on a high ranking ad. The Google Analytics reports can easily be used in return of investment calculations and used in budgeting or other marketing decisions.
Using Web Analytics Feedback To Increase Profits
When trying to increase profits, many companies are looking for new ways. One good way of doing this is by incorporating web analytics feedback. By placing it on a business website, it basically studies online behavior in order to improve it.
However, so little people actually understand what the point is of using a web analytics service. Web analytics feedback allows the user to quickly become aware of any activity on their websites.
Very user friendly, these reports carry only necessary information on what your website is or is not doing and one will be able to pick up on whether your companies website is useful or not. By determining this, one can then increase profits by simply using the information from the web analytics feedback and applying it to make educated decisions based on the report.
Useful Decision Making Tool
As mentioned above web analytics are handy in decision-making. How they do this is by tracking visitors on your websites and recording all their actions. What you will be able to see is which links they use and how long they stay on your website and where they drop off.
A hit link is a type of web analytics aid used in a similar way to detect who visits your site and how they found you. It will show if they buy or transact on your site and also how effective your advertising is. The information received can now be used to decide what ads to keep, what links to improve on or whether people are interested in the site at all.
Performance To Increase Profits
How exactly will knowing the performance of a website increase profits? Is the website not only but an additional source of advertising? True, a companies website could be seen as another way of promoting a business but what needs to be remembered is that some companies solely rely on the internet to not only market their business but sometimes it is their business.
All correspondence is done via the Internet as well as sales. Making use of web analytics feedback in these circumstances is vitally important. To be able to work out the trend on the site and know the activity thereon ultimately helps in decision making but also increase profits.
By incorporating a hits link, one is able to monitor the amount of people entering their site daily. With this, they will be able to see where they can improve their products more and also try to figure out why there is low activity. They will be able to tell at which point a potential customer drops off and then make the website more captivating.
Statistic Geek Not Necessary
With various hit link services readily available on the internet web analytic aids are advantages in the sense that instead of hiring a stats professional or your IT guy to monitor web activity, business are empowered to measure how engaged users are themselves which is another way of saving money and indirectly increasing profits.
