What Are Web Analytics Information Technology Essay

What Are Web Analytics Information Technology EssayWeb analytics is reporting and digest of data on meshingsite visitor activity. It is non scarcely a tool to measure web calling but also can be subroutined as a tool for chore and market research. Techniques used to access and improve the contribution of e-merchandising to a business, much(prenominal) as referrals, clickstreams, online research data, customer satisfaction surveys, leads and sales. Thus, marketers use web analytics exploring data and reports to configuration their familiarity on customers preference and behavior according to types of sites, which beas customers click more often when they online. It also helps marketer understand their customers let out and improve their business performance. (Dykes, 2012)Marketers deficient to go web-analytics have to first go finished the following periods.( configuration I)These are three stages that they need to concern when setting up a web analytic tool. The abs tract is the ticket for them move from Steupland to Actionland. It is the isolating of meaningful and actionable insights in data and reports that when acted upon by your organization can drive business value. (Dykes, 2012)Alignment stageAt this early planning stage, it is necessary for marketer to gather their business objectives and capture stakeholders online behavior by their online measurement outline. Clearly understand measurement strategy and well analyze visitors is critical to success. Thus, marketers have to carefully handling relevant and meaningful data which will directly affect the business in the long-term. (Dykes, 2012) line of battle stageAt this point of stage, large companies may spend amount of succession on technical implementation such as multiple web domains and online marketing initiatives. (Dykes, 2012)Reporting stageThis is the last stage for companies move from Setupland to Actionland. This stage is important where you create report and distribute them to organization utilise a manual or preferably automated approach. (Dykes, 2012)TOOLS AND METHODS USED TO HELP MARKETERThere are two types of web analytics, on-the-spot(prenominal) and off-site web analytics.(Figure II)ON-SITE ANALYTICS on-the-spot(prenominal) web analytics is used for marketers to measure a visitors activity when he browses on your website. This includes its drivers and conversations, for example which ads on landing page encourage more people to procure and which title of instruction visitors click most. This data is used to analysis visitors online behavior and can be used to improve website or marketing campaigns hearing response.Simply, on-site web analytics tools are used to analysis and measure behaviors of visitors journey and actual visitor work arriving on your website. For example, which landing page encourage visitors to make a purchase, what links visitors clicked on (from search engine to get to the site or came there directly) to the site, and time they spent and stayed on given page. Therefore, On-site web analytics measures of website in a commercial context.For the business, website became more important than ever before, it handles more information. Companies also need to know if their marketing campaigns are working on net income-based, just exchangeable John Shumway, the global vice president of product carry onment at Akamai says marketing people are increasingly driving the need for we analytics. (Dave Chaffey, 2003)Firms can conduct on-site web-analytics through the following waysAnalytics Software Produced by CompaniesSome companies such as WebTrends and Google Analytics produce web analytics software program that converts data by using combination of tables and graphs. It automatically monitors your websites traffic and highlights any significant changes,thus, managers can easily understand and analysis the efficaciousness of their campaigns. And, where visitors come from and which pages retain visitors th e longest, and also, track visitors progress s they click though the site. As seen on Figure II.1. (Dave Chaffey, 2003)(Figure II.1)It can be only if shows daily visit on your website, type on traffic and time on site by country.Other technologies for data collectionOther technologies companies used for data collection are eye tracking system and fawn tracking analytics. It is a key method for testing visitors behavior and areas they focus more often when they on a web page, and both eye tracking and e mouse tracking analytics studies offer businesses accurate and actionable results. Therefore, the result can be used to improve a web site or marketing campaigns audience response.Eye tracking system is utilized by many top enterprises such as Google. This tracking system uses specialist software to track internet visitors where the eyes land on a webpage. As shown on Figure II.2, Heatmaps areas are visitors look on more frequent on the webpage. (Ronan de Kervenoael, 2013)(Figure I I.2)Similar to eye tracking system, Mouse tracking analyticsfollows the mouse movements of internet users to simulate eye movement on a webpage. As seen on Figure II.3, the denser of the area is, visitor put more attention on that area of the web page.(Figure II.3)From the research, it has shown when both methods of testing are conducted simultaneously, in the result, they find out scarcely what the visitors look at on the page which contains 84%-88% verity. In addition, both method of tracking analytics deliver valuable information to managers about visitors involvement and plight with your website. This is vital to work out what changes you need to make in order to benefit your visitors experience as well as improve the website. (ClickTale, 2010)OFF-SITE ANALYTICSoff-site analytics data can be obtained for any website-including your competitors and partners. Which means is analysis the internet as a whole for the websites. Thus, the key differences of off-site web analytics mea sures from your potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments).Unlikely to on-site web analytics only captures what happens when visitors visit and engage with your website, by using various technologies to help monitor and analysis website to create meaningful actions and results. However, as social website becomes more popular and ascendant channel for internet users, and everything becomes more transparent on social web, organization information are shared, spread on it, thus, through this platform, marketers are able to measure the latest buzz about website or organization.it is important for marketers to monitor not only what happens on the website but also outside of your website. Improving from what other people are saying about the company and provide products and services match customers requires. off-site Web Analytics solutions can help businesses stay on the leading edge of boilersuit trends.(Monitoring Buzz With Off-Site Web Analytics , 2010)Firms can conduct off-site web-analytics through the following available softwareAlexa and CompeteThere are numerals of web analytics software provided service to measure your competitors how much and what type of traffic are garnering to their site. AlexaandCompete are two free services help marketers to find top-level information, including the top searches people used to find the site, as well as traffic comparisons versus other Websites. For more comparison capabilities and a deeper level of demographic information, marketer can just simply upgrades their account.Similar to AlexaandCompete system offerings monitor and meat a wide swath of Web traffic, paid services fromQuantcastandNielsen NetRatings also provide analytics tools and research related to online audiences, as well as online ad acquire and selling.As by shown example of how Alexa provide services for marketers by monitoring and aggregating a wide swath of Web traffic from multiple sources to develop estimat es for overall ranking and other factors.On the table 1 below, shows top 5 sites on the web. According to off-site web analytics is measuring about your competitors and monitoring the internet as whole website, it is obvious for marketers to analysis the market, so that company can generate more sales, reduce marketing costs, enhance campaign performance, provide better user experience, and reach specific target segments. As well as on table, more specific shows competitor daily/monthly search traffic and top queries from search traffic and more other details. Thus, research on your competitors and understand their strategy, is the advantages for the company to take step forward than others in the market.(Table 1)(Table 2)Co embrace and HootSuiteThere are other tools likeCoTweetandHootSuiteare relative newcomers to the market when they looking further out into the social web. Especially for small and medium-size business that use tools to monitoring and engaging with social web. It started as management tools Twitter, but they are now expanding their support for other social channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn. It simply for an organization tracks the effectiveness of multiple marketing efforts in multiple social channels, and also from platforms.Because social web such as Twitter and Facebook, it creates more effective buzz to a company. Therefore, this platform is critical important for for small and medium-size business to enhance awareness. CoTweet is a web-basedsocial media managementandanalyticstool. With CoTweet you can not only manage clicks on content you publish within the application, but also integrate any web analytics platforms with campaign codes and shortened URLs. Just like Bobowski believes it provides closed-loop reporting and allows marketers to tie revenue and other success metrics to social media activity. (Peters, 2011)As shown table below, CoTweet also provides updates and follow-up messages to be assigned to specific social media managers. Different knowledge of social media managers can responses immediately to appropriate forelands and comments from followers, which shows to followers that there are person behind responding the questions. Also, from the questions and buzz marketers will know who he is talking with if question arise for as specific tweet. It helps marketers collected more accurate data and responded visitors needs.CONCLUSIONThis report has shown that Web continues to have growing importance in marketing efforts, therefore on-site and off-site Web Analytics solutions will likely become more crucial tools that lead to greater business success. This is supported by the number of toolset made available to businesses of all sizes to monitor and analyze web traffic on their sites in order to determine what is happening not only passim the rest of the Web ecosystem but also in social media.AppendixThere are other different online metrics collection methods that help marketers for analysis and un derstand visitors and purchasers.IDTechniqueStrengthsWeaknesses1Server-based logfileanalysis of site activity(web analytics)Directly records customer behavior on site plus where they were referred fromLow costDoesn t directly record channel satisfactionUndercounting and over countingMisleading unless interpreted carefully2Browser-based site activitydata (web analytics)Greater accuracy than server-based analysisCounts all users, unlike the panel approachSimilar weaknesses to server based technique apart from accuracy2-Limited demographic information3Panels activity anddemographic dataProvides competitor comparisonsGives demographic profilingAvoids undercounting and over countingDepends on extrapolation from limited sample that may not be interpretive program4Outcome data, e.g.enquiries, sales, customerservice e-mailsRecords marketing outcomesDifficulty of integrating data with other methods of data collection when collected manually or in other information systems5Online questionnai resCustomers are promptedrandomly everynthcustomer or after customeractivity or by e-mailCan record customer satisfaction and profilesRelatively cheap to create and analyzeDifficulty of recruiting respondents who complete accuratelySample bias fly the coop to be advocates or disgruntled customers who complete6Online focus groups synchronous recordingRelatively cheap to createDifficult to moderate and co-ordinateNo visual cues as from offline focus groups7Mystery shoppers.Example customers arerecruited to evaluate thesite, e.g.www.emysteryshopper.comStrstructured tests give detailed feedbackAlso tests integration with other channels such as e-mail and phoneRelatively expensiveSample must be representative