Web Analytics – 5 Online Data Types that must be tracked!

Web analytics is the measurement and analysis of data to optimize a webpage. It is a tool for businesses and for improving website effectiveness. Marketing is no longer done just through word of mouth, it is now done through digital platforms. Web analysis is used by marketers in understanding consumers’ online behaviour and thus, launching campaigns according to the target audience.

Online tracking is now not limited to the installation of the traditional “cookies” recording the websites a user visits. It has evolved with new tools to track in real-time the data people are accessing or browsing on a web page combining it with data about that user’s location, income and hobbies. The updated tools include flash cookies & beacons that can be used to re-install cookies that a user has deleted, and can track user activities on a web page including the content user is sharing and consuming, along with the location of the cursor.

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Web Analytics is not simply a traffic measurement tool, the humongous data generated has significant use for business and marketing research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of a website. Insights from web analytics can feed into targeting online advertising to bring in more traffic, testing how the website feature changes have impacted the It can also be used for broadcast advertising campaigns and to estimate traffic to a website changes after the launch of a new advertising campaign.

These analytics specifically counts visitors to a website and the number of page views resulting in traffic and popularity trends which are useful for market research. While most of the entrepreneurial firms only track Google Analytics or Adobe’s Site Catalyst, there are six significant data types in web analytics that should be tracked for improving online business.

The process of visitor behaviour analysis utilizes the data accumulated from consumer behaviour and assists organizations in making crucial decisions through market segmentation & predictive analytics. The information fetched out is then further implemented for direct marketing, client relationship management, site selection and so on. In terms of user behaviour, 6 major data should be tracked including:

1. Click tracking

Click tracking is an analytics feature that identifies where visitors have clicked on websites, applications and emails. A click tracking tool records mouse clicks and taps (on mobiles). This data is collected and is displayed numerically, visually through heat maps and through individual sessions (session recordings). This software is used by analysts, marketers and researchers to measure conversions, user engagement, and to identify website errors.

2. Scroll depth

It is a Google Analytics plugin that lets the website administrator measure how far users are scrolling. You can measure scroll depth both horizontally and vertically. Scroll depth is triggered at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. You would require Google Analytics and jQuery (v1.7+) for setting up the ‘Scroll Depth’ plugin. You can also use scroll depth on specific elements and you can disable it as well for documents that do not meet the height requirement of the plugin.

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3. Live visitors

Live visitors are the people who are viewing a website in real-time. Measuring this data will instantly let you see what visitors are doing on your site in real-time. You can also see visitors’ details such as the number of unique visitors, location of visitors, devices and OS that they are using. Once you start tracking this data, you will be able to optimize the website content accordingly.

4. Session Recording

Through session recording, you can understand a visitor’s entire journey on the website including mouse movements, scrolls and clicks. It is a tool that records browsing sessions of visitors in real-time so that you can analyze visitor behaviour insights such as part of the website that attracts them most or not. You can also experience breakage, identify friction areas to fix what is broken, optimize the user experience to improve conversion rates and more.

5. Site speed

Site speed is one of the important ranking factors for SEO in web analytics. Site speed reflects the amount of time in which users will be able to interact with the elements of your website. If your site speed is low  (more than 3 seconds), most of the users will move away from your website. This will also signify that crawlers have to spend more time crawling through your website which will ultimately bring down your website’s ranking. Site speed is important to users since faster-loading websites are more efficient and enhance user experience.

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We should look beyond the assumption that only the data attached directly to a website is useful. It is equally important to observe email campaigns, newsletters and in-app messaging tools. These provide a panoramic view of the business. Lifecycle analytics can be essential in assisting with product making and manufacturing decisions. Tools like Heat-Map tracking can draw a picture of where they look on your page and where they’re clicking.

Designing & launching a successful marketing campaign implies choosing to invest money in the channels with the biggest ROI for the business. We should track the marketing activity and observe which areas are apt for investment along with which are failing to lure customers.

No doubt, the existing analytics package make us comprehend how customers behave on a page, but by drilling deeper into on-site engagement, we can better comprehend how to improve usability.

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