Next stage of Web Analytics
At present, Web Analytics is being considered only to understand the visitors’ behaviors of the web site… But it is just growing to the next level. All the marketing executives are in need to measure the effectiveness of their online marketing efforts. This is the point which is going to take the web analytics to the next level. Soon Web Analytics won’t be just to know what visitors did in our site; it will be predictive. We will come to know what visitors will do in our sites. It will happen only when all the marketing system comes together and tie up with web analytics. We can able to predict the things like,
- Say, normally a visitor visits our site three times to know about our services and what we offer and finally becomes a customer. Since we have X% increase in total customers with 3 visits, we can predict the sales to be $Y in coming quarter financial year.
- Let A,B,C be – web pages, visits, method or path etc.. on the web sites results in $XX sales (may be online marketing, offline, affiliates, partners or other ways.) in one month. Considering we got X number of visitors with A,B,C paths we can forecast $Y in revenue in coming month” etc. We should spend $Z on the banner ad on Google network and $Y on Yahoo network and $Z on Microsoft Network because they will result in X pages views of ABC page and hence maximizing our ROI and bringing in $YYY dollars in revenue (again this could be offline, online or thorough other sales channels).
- Divide your customers into 5 distinct segments; they exhibit distinct behavior on the site and have distinct needs and buying behavior. Considering that visitors who match the onsite behavior of segment 1 is growing on our site we need to focus our marketing efforts so that we can grow other segment in a way that benefits us or we can plan our inventory considering the needs of growing segment 1.
- We can see visitors coming through search engines X times & Y times to a page and try to contact us for a reason like “free compliments on ever purchase” or “10% discount”. We should find offer attracts them most to become customer and try to show the particular message. Sure we can expect increase in Z% Conversion.
This is how we can do with web analytics according to the need of the company. Some need sales; some need Leads, hits like that.
More than all web analysts should be asked to sit on the table along with the decision makers of the company. Web Analytics can be taken to next level for companies’ growth only when web analysts grown by the company.
Cheers,
Praveen Kumar C