Understanding the Relevance of Web Analytics

Web analytics - the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data as it relates to to the optimization of a company's web site - has come a long way from the days when a Web site's traffic report consisted of page after page of inscrutable (and mostly meaningless data).

Companies and their marketers know that today's Web analysis tools deliver readable and meaningful information that enable companies to continuously improve site programming, site design, and search engine marketing campaigns. Also, analytics programs are getting less expensive. Google Analytics, for example, offers its programs for free.

Off-site web analytics are the measurement of a website's potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole. On-site web analytics measure a visitor's journey once on your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase.

What marketers measure:

All site traffic - What pages visitors clicked on, how long they spent on your site, where the user is geographically located.

Referring URL - What site the user came from right before they got to your site.

PPC and/or SEO keyword - Track the keywords users type into the search engines that bring them to your site.

Phone calls - Straight North can track all phone calls made from the website and where that user came from (organic traffic, paid traffic, directly to the site, etc.) Phone calls are recorded, reviewed, and filtered for sales potential. Then we deliver the results to you.

PPC ads - Straight North can track which ad visitors clicked on and which landing page they came to, before they contacted the client.

So with the ostensible power of analytics done right, why would companies opt out?

The first logical reason is unawareness: some companies may simply not recognize how useful analyzing their website can be. The next possibility is about work: it is simply laborious to slog through mountains of dats looking for trends. It is more fun, frankly, to create a visually impressive website and cool graphics. But is is way more profitable to fo the former in conjunction with the latter. On that note, another reason for failure is that some companies don't understand how to interpret what they are looking at. And lastly, some companies simply relegate web development to the back burner. The last two reasons are then best examples of when it makes sense to retain a firm that handles Web analytics and SEM campaigns.

It is time to call a company like Straight North if you – regardless of your company's size, age, and location – are trying to better answer the following questions: Who is visiting my site? When are they visiting? Why are they visiting? Where are they from? Why are they leaving?