Web analytics – Benefits of visitor tracking
Web analytics, also known website visitor tracking and analyzing, will give you accurate information about the profitability of your marketing as well your customers’ behavior in your website.
Web analytics tell you how your marketing could be developed on a general, channel-specific and campaign-specific level.
The cornerstone of productive digital marketing is reliable measurement of its effectiveness. Our measurement framework strives to cover all your company’s marketing actions. In the best cases we can use the collected information not only for maximising your advertising revenue, but also for your business’ overall development.
The processes of measuring should be taken as a serious part of digital marketing at the earliest possible stage, so that there will be comparable data available in the future as well.
Our web analytics solution also contains the visualisation of the collected data in an easily available and interpretable form, such as a Dashboard. With the help of this, marketing management becomes easier because you will directly see which marketing activities bring in results and which ones have to be further developed.
Web analytics is a necessary part of digital marketing because:
- without web analytics and measurability, it is impossible to develop marketing based on data
- without web analytics you don’t see if your marketing is profitable, which makes budgeting challenging
- with precisely installed analytics you can follow how digital marketing campaigns work and get value for your money
- you will see how your customers move and stay on your website
- you will see where your customers come from to your website
- you will figure out what the factors are as to why you lose customers
- you will see what the most popular pages are and which pages must be developed
The power of digital marketing lies in that you will exactly know who visits your website, and how they end up there. Without measuring, marketing would be only guessing.
Develop your marketing based on data
By collecting information and measuring the most essential factors of your business, you can develop your marketing and get the best possible benefits for your company. You know how the different channels work and you can lead your marketing in a profitable direction.
Use your budget for the best channels
John Wanamaker’s saying about marketing was true before digital marketing: “Half of your marketing budget is wasted, but I don’t know which half”. Nowadays you don’t have to waste your budget because you know exactly what kind of results each channel gets.
Do reliable tests
You can test different channels, like Facebook and LinkedIn, and find out which channel brings the toughest result. This is how you know in which channels you should invest more budget, and in which less.
Stop guessing with the dashboard
Everyone has their own opinion about the effectivity of marketing, but data tells the truth. From the visualised marketing dashboard you can follow the marketing effectiveness in real time. At the same time, the dashboard makes management, budgeting, and decision-making easier. Read more about the marketing dashboard in our blog.
Why is web analytics a critical part of your marketing?
Visitor tracking is an inalienable part of website- and digital marketing. If you don’t track the visitors of your website, you lose a lot of potential from your website and marketing, nor are you able to develop your marketing reliably. Without visitor tracking, measuring and analysing results, you are operating through guessing.
Advertising in web is not about shooting keywords, but accurate testing. Web analytics provide valuable information about the functionality of your digital marketing. It tells for example:
- who visits your website – what is the age, country, language and city of the visitors
- what are they interested in and what are they doing on your website
- what pages do they read and how do they surf between your pages
- if your marketing is targeted to the right group
- what kind of marketing approach works in the best way to each target group
- how much does one euro for marketing bring in revenue
The utilisation of data is not only limited to the development of marketing, but it also helps product developing, product portfolio design, buyer personas creation and recruitment planning.
Many-sided numbers are simple feedback
Every single number that web analytics shows is formed from your customers’ behavior. Numbers are direct feedback, how your customers have experienced your website, products and advertising.
One number tells: “I couldn’t find anything necessary from this subpage and I moved to your competitor’s website.” Another number tells that: “This matter made me interested in your product.” Third number tells that: “This feature of your product clearly interests customers at the age of 25-35.”
Reach better customers
With the data you can see which channels, what kind of advertisements, and what kind of marketing approaches bring you the most customers. When you add resources for these from the channels that do not work as well as these channels, you will reach more customers.
Turn more visitors into leads
What kind of things turn the visitor into a lead? The data will tell you this automatically! If 80% of video viewers or 70% of certain blog readers download your guide, it gives you plenty of information about what your customers are interested in.
Turn more leads into deals
The data tells what kind of things are important for your leads that they will become your customers. You will see, how reading references will have an influence on that the lead turns into deal.
Engage with your customers with your company
Which customers engage with your company and where have they come from? Even though a campaign would bring you a lot of new customers, is it still more profitable to do more segmented marketing to certain target groups because they are more likely to buy again?
Web analytics according to MRACE framework
We set trackable key figures for each phase of the buying process, so each phase of the MRACE model has their own expectations and metrics. Our primary goal is to direct the resources into actions at the general level, which get you the most results. As a whole, our aim is that your marketing channels work together in order to achieve your business goals.
With the collected data we find the problems of your website from the perspective of your potential buyer. This applies both to your website’s technical functionality, as well as the assumed barriers that are in your buyer’s purchase journey.
Each marketing campaign is an investment and you expect them to bring you value. With web analytics we understand which channels get results at the best rate of return and we can make decisions about the optimal distribution of your marketing budget.
Our goal is to illustrate your company’s overall digital business, choose the most important metrics, and strive for continuous development through testing.
Reach = How do you reach more customers?
What kind of channels and campaigns will bring you the most customers at the most cost-effective price? And are there some critical flaws that prevent the acquisition of potential customers, and you are not even aware of that?
Act = How do even more customers turn into leads?
Which things make a visitor turn into a lead? If a certain campaign or landing page clearly generates the most leads, you will learn which things your customers are especially interested in. You will also see how even small development actions in your landing page will have an influence on how much your landing page generates leads.
Convert = Convert = How do more customers turn into deals?
We help you to figure out which factors are more likely to turn a lead into a buying customer. Has reading or viewing of certain types of content been useful that a lead becomes a customer?
Engage = What kind of actions get your customers to engage?
Which kind of customers are the most profitable for you and what kind of campaigns have been useful? And are these customers more permanent, who also regularly spend time on your website after buying?
Measurement starts from understanding the business
Measuring by itself does not bring in any additional value for your business if you do not use it in right ways. The most important thing is to understand the business and use measuring for supporting the main goal. Think about the reason for having your website. What is your main goal? What has the most impact on your business? These questions are essential in order to find out what we should measure for improving and supporting your sales.
In its simplicity, what is measured should be the most influential factor for your business. It is essential for us to understand as to why the website exists in the first place, so that we can build the right kind of metrics. Here your role is invaluable: we can provide you with an analytics specialist to tell you what kind of things we can measure and how to analyze the results, but only you know what should be measured from your business’ point of view.
We measure the main goals of your company
Once you have clarified for yourself, what the main goal of your company is and why you have a website in the first place, you know to which factors you want to harness your metrics. Your main goals and reasons to maintain a website should be things you are going to measure.
Whether it is about an online store, from which its main goal is to get the customers to buy the products, or websites from which their goal is to get as many visitors as possible to join their email list, measuring has to be tied in with these goals. Only by linking the measurements to the key factors of your company’s business, you will get data that matters for developing your marketing, increasing your sales, and improving your website.
The factor that is going to be measured must be connected to the visitor’s actions. This can be joining an email- or blog list, contacting, making a purchase, or any other action that can be converted into a measurable form. If the results don’t show a cause-and-effect relationship between the different factors, measurability is useless because it cannot be used to improve the business.
By analyzing the results you get information
By analysing the results you will get to know the features of your audience, but you will also get valuable information about how you can turn your website’s visitors into customers. Improving sales is the ultimate goal of a business, but to get there you have to understand the business, the customer group, and the different impacts of marketing activities.
This understanding is possible through knowledge and that is exactly what web analytics provides. On the other hand, knowledge allows for change and development, which are the key factors of improving sales. By measuring we can track different routes, where people come from, and thereby lead marketing, for example. Because the website has a certain goal, we can observe how people, who are coming from different channels, fill these goals. Naturally, you want more people to your website who are going to do the desired actions, such as joining an email list, making a purchase, or contacting you and leaving an offer request.
Based on the analysis you develop your marketing
Marketing development is the biggest benefit of visitor tracking. If you don’t know what is going on on your website and with the marketing, you cannot do marketing effectively and meaningfully. By developing marketing based on the analysed results, you will turn the results into business numbers.
With visitor tracking you will get data about what actions people undertake on your website, how they behave, and what their reactions are in regard to your marketing. These functions and behaviour will turn into numbers and by following, as well developing them, we can make visitors’ actions easier on your website and lead them towards the desired action. Let’s give an example.
Imagine that you have an online store where you sell clothes. You can follow step by step how people go through the buying process. You see what kind of clothes people choose and where they came to your website, how many of them end up at checkout, and how many will actually make the purchase. Considering this information, you can plan what kind of shirts or dresses you should place in each page, and if you are going to sell jackets or trousers for people who come from Facebook. You should also think about what clothes and brands you reserve in your warehouse and what payment method is the most popular, in the other words, which one should be placed in the most visible place in the payment phase.
In addition, you can test the functionality of your website, because you see how visitors act in your website, from which page they are moving to next, and what is working on your website, all while taking your goals into account. In other words, you will learn from your visitors and you can utilise this knowledge to improve your marketing, as well as your website.
In this way, web analytics has to do with conversion optimisation and with that, you will know how well you can turn visitors into customers in your website. You know what the most important pages in your website are and what kind of changes should be done there in order to increase the number of visitors, keep them on your website, and lead them further on your website. You know what kind of traffic you will get from what kind of channels: maybe you will get the most paying customers from Facebook and LinkedIn brings you the most contact requests and because of organic traffic, your email list becomes full.
When you know your most important channel, you know where and how much you should invest in order to maximise the benefit.
Google Analytics: standard of visitor tracking
Google Analytics is the basic level and standard of web analytics. It is a measuring system that can be installed on a website and it tells you where people come from to your website and what they are doing there. The program installs a snippet of code on each page of your website, which helps to collect the data of visitors’ actions. However the program does not violate the privacy of visitors and it deletes all the information, which helps to personalise the visitor.
Google Analytics is a free program which only requires a Google account. The program is easy to install by following our instructions step by step. Google Analytics is the basis level of web analytics that should be in your website. If you have not installed Google Analytics on your website, digital marketing is insufficient and you are wasting your money.
We offer you the following
Our knowledge of Google Analytics is strong. We offer you especially good understanding of business and marketing besides analysing tools. With our knowledge and your expertise we build metrics for your business for you to understand and which measures relevant and essential factors of your business.
Our web analytic specialist tells you what is measurable, and provide you with their expertise to find out what should be measured. Our task is to understand the numbers and produce useful information to you. We ensure that the measured factors really matters to your business.
Only building metrics is not enough. Therefore, we develop your marketing based on results. We invest in what works and leave out that what does not work, so you will not lose money in marketing, but you maximise the benefit. Our strength is continuous development. We constantly develop our own company in cycles and in the same way we develop our customers’ marketing.
By combining your knowledge of your business field with our understanding of web analytics, we form a team that will be guaranteed to improve your digital marketing.
Contact us and let’s start to develop your marketing with web analytics.