Module 3 is all
about web analytics. I was very excited for this module because of a special
cross-functional team which had me working with the marketing team. During that
time they rolled out a new website that would let them track all sorts of
metrics to track our brand awareness. Brand awareness was a new concept to me
and they weren't technical at all so I always wondered how it could work and if
it did work. Enter my introduction to web analytics.
The definition from
lecture 9, from the Web Analytics Association, defines web analytics as
"The measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of internet data for
the purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage." That's a pretty
broad charge - what you want to understand or optimize far is going to depend
on if you're a University recruiting students and staff, an opensource project
sharing your results, a small business selling your wares, or a large business
selling your wares. That is something that jumped out to me as I worked on
homework 3. There's so much data and without a purpose or questions you need
answered it is kind of meaningless. On the same note, not asking those
questions and having a clear, definitive purpose for your website is a waste
because there is a treasure trove of data available to improve the results
you're getting. All of that is backed by the Web Analytics Cycle which starts
with setting goals, measuring metrics related to the goal, reporting on the metrics,
analyzing the metrics and finally optimizing based on those metrics. How do you
set the goal? You need to start with the Five W's of Web Analytics - what, who,
when, where and why. As you delve into the user base for your website you can
start to understand their demographics by where they're coming from, type of
device used, age, gender and so forth. You'll be able to see where traffic
comes from to track success of an ad campaign or to see what areas to focus on.
There were more metrics out of the box than I could have thought of mattering
but as I tried to understand my website for the homework I wished I had more
metrics! Only the bare bones had been set up because the business wasn't really
using the metrics to their full advantage.
Half of the module
focused on Google Analytics. We learned how it integrates with websites and
gives a simple, free tool to wade through all of the metrics and questions that
we have. Much like with dashboards from module 2, Google Analytics makes the metrics
extremely consumable with visual reports that can be exported or converted into
a grid if you want just poor numbers. Exploring the data was easy and it was
easy to customize the views to focus on just one specific areas - like
comparing new vs returning sessions while at the same time comparing that to
new vs returning sessions of people who made purchases.
Catherine Brock in
"What Web Analytics Says About Your Brand" brought up some really
interesting points about using metrics to tell the story of your brand. She
talks about rationalizing metrics and the need to really confirm it to make
sure you understand the story your metrics are telling. She talks about what a
website with the majority of session times less than 10 seconds means and how
most website owners will defend this. The defense will come with what they
believe is the cause - such as they were just looking for a phone number and
got it - but this is a guess with no data behind it. There are tools can be
used, in this case a tracking phone number, to tell the story more clearly. Her
thoughts spoke to me because we see online all the time how statistics are
misconstrued or understood.
Web analytics are
powerful tools but must be combined with clear business goals and a commitment
to reviewing and acting upon the data.
Citations
Brock, Catherine.
'What Web Analytics Says About Your Brand'. Business
2 Community 15 Feb. 2015. Web. 18
Feb. 2015.
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