The Internet is turning out to be the most vital customer touch point and the major profit generator, even for businesses that are not first of mind.And it is why an emerging field called Web Analytics is rapidly penetrating into the list of what companies nowadays must take into consideration.
And without the latter, my fellow data miners' (whose blog links are found left of this page) and my datamin class with Mr. Ramon Duremdes Jr. would not be as meaningful as it is. Indeed, it is a wired wired world.
The Web Analytics Association officially defines web analytics as the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.
Figuratively speaking, web analytics is just a tot. The child has grown up since birth and now can somewhat nosh itself, however there is plenty of growth and development ahead of it. The web has indeed "grown up" as a conduit for most firms, and swiftly there is an unfathomable demand for the web channel.
A good number of people are introduced to web analytics by means of reports popping out of a web log parser, Google Analytics or perhaps one of the high-end tools. We come across massive amounts of reports and make an attempt to make sense of them. Web analytics, however, is relatively multifaceted, and it is at all times, most favorable to take a step back from the tools and reports and beforehand, comprehend the basics.Critical components of a successful web analytics strategy, according to what Avinash Kaushik mentioned in Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, consist of the following:
Focus on customer centricity. Assessing how your website is bringing to your customers will facilitate focus on your web analytics program and allow you to thoroughly juggle around with the metrics needed to be calculated to rate performance of the website. This means new metrics, approaches, tools, and people. Simply to think about the existence of the website.The Trinity Approach to web analytics is based in
conveying customer centricity to your web analytics strategy. The Trinity puts a huge importance on measuring all faces of customer experience to totally comprehend why customers visit your website and how the website is doing in terms of meeting their needs.Customer centricity is an approach that when implemented can provide a sustainable competitive advantage.
Solve for business questions. Commence the process of dealing with business questions early on –prior to having a web analytics tool, before knowing what the site is or what it does. Recognizing business questions is a journey. This development and evolution is a mark that you are in fact answering business questions and not just doing reporting, because business is at all times evolving and changing to you have to merely learn to change with it.
Follow the 10/90 rule. 10 percent of the budget should be used up on tools, and the remaining 90 percent on people who will be in charge of insights. This speaks to the apparent secret of web analytics’ success: it’s the people, not the tools and cool technology.
A successful web analytics strategy does not come in a box, with a one-time purchase cost. As a matter of fact, getting the adequate web analytics tools is still, only half the battle; the real focus of any web analytics program must be the people who work with it.
Hire great web analysts who
- Have used more than one web analytics tool extensively
- Frequent the Yahoo! Web Analytics group and the top web analytics blogs
- Before doing any important analysis, visit the website and look at the web pages
- Their core approach is customer centric
- Understand the technical differences between page tagging, log files, packet sniffing and beacons
- Are comfortable in the quantitative and qualitative worlds
- Are avid explorers
- Are effective communicators
- Are street smart
- Play offense and not just defense
- Bonus: are survivors
Identify optimal organizational structure and responsibilities. In nearly all companies, the IT team still possesses web analytics and is in the business of choosing vendors and even making available standard reports. Nonetheless, the world has drastically changed. The kinds of metrics and reports called for are dissimilar, the vendor/solution models, are fundamentally diverse and lastly, the utilization of web data is different.And just like all things that are worth doing, this never-ending process takes patience as well as persistence. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
