Importance of Web Analytics to Online Marketing

Irrespective of the type of website you have, a storefront, an informational or a little-bit-of-both type, web analytics is crucial in determining whether you are achieving your goals or not. Web analytics can also guide you towards your future development and ensure a constant success in all your web strategies.

Although internet marketing is much more than just emails, to track the progress of your email marketing strategy, a number of helpful metrics can be provided by your email service provider.

What is web analytics?

The fact that customers have the option of taking numerous other paths to reach your website, paths like search engine results, pop up ads, ads in the forms of banners, links that are found on social media sites, etc., makes it crucial for you to track every bit of your customer’s behaviour to understand what works for you and what doesn’t.

You need a tool that lets you track where your web traffic is coming from. What are the kinds of blog posts, the topics, the pages that are diverting the maximum amount of traffic to your website? You also need to know what is the best day and time when traffic is typically the maximum on your website. What are the typical keywords that people type into search engines that drive them to your website? Web analytics tools lets you keep a track on all of this and also how the leads are converting to actual buyers.

This information is vital in helping you marketing strategies be a success. The data gathered by web analytics can help you identify and choose the best strategy that works for you, the best day and they best time to leverage maximum success out of your marketing strategies.

Web analytics can also help you generate new leads and target new markets that might not have occurred to you otherwise.

Ignoring web analytics is like throwing away your opportunities to improve and develop the true potential of your website and also to let go of your chance to expand, focus and develop your business to best meet your target market.

There are equally vast numbers of web analytics providers that you can choose from to help you achieve this goal. So far, Google analytics is the largest provider of web analytics out there which offers a vast number of services yet is absolutely free. You can choose from the vast number of providers apart from Google, that you can buy for a basic annual subscription too. Irrespective of the provider you choose for yourself, you need to have the basic idea of the types of information that are available for you.

On-site analytics

The way your customers behave while they are on your website is referred to as On-site analytics. On-site analytics lets you track how are the users navigating your website, which are the pages that are visited more often than others, are there too many exits after a particular page? How long do visitors stay on your site, how many of these footfalls result into actual conversions or purchases?

The ability to focus on every customer individually is one of the most convenient and useful features offered by web analytics. For example, you can track users behaviours and compare the data between the users who actually ended up making a successful purchase as opposed to the ones who didn’t. It can also help you track the difference in behaviours between the users who make substantial purchases versus the ones who make small ones.

It must be remembered at all times that your ultimate goal is to make successful sales and conversions and not merely increasing web traffic. On-site analytics therefore helps you track what is working for your website and what is not, to determine what is actually the feature/s that is actually driving in revenue and what aren’t.

Off-Site analytics

To understand what your customers are doing while they are on your website, you first need to drive them to your website. You need to use different forms of online advertising, email campaigns, and lot more to lure your audience to your website. Off-site analytics tools will help you track your progress and understand which efforts worked the best for you and which ones didn’t.

Understanding the source of your website traffic is vital. The main purpose of web analytics is to find out how much of your traffic is coming from where – for example, whether they are coming via search engine hit, your banner ads, bookmarks, etc.

A good analytic tool will provide you with a detailed report of which term lead to the maximum number of footfalls to your website when searched, which advertisement drove the maximum amount of visitors to your website and which social media was responsible for leading the maximum number of clicks on your banner ad.

The more organized and efficient your web analytic tool is, the more accurately and quickly it tracks the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Even the most basic tools provide you with information that is almost in real time.

The most vital part of your marketing strategy are online marketing and mobile marketing. It’s a long established fact that good web analytics can help your marketing strategies in the age where new media channels are evolving rapidly and are fast becoming the need of the hour. Choosing just the right tool that matches your business needs will pay you back in fat money.

What is the most important Data?

Depending on your business type, and the goal you are aiming to achieve, the following data should be looked out for,

  1. Page Views
  2. Amount of time spent on your site
  3. Downloads
  4. Click path
  5. Click map
  6. Referral websites
  7. Referral search engines
  8. Direct visits
  9. Offline campaigns and dedicated URLs
  10. Tracked links and online campaigns
  11. Keywords
  12. Visitor’s geography
  13. New visitors
  14. Returning visitors
  15. Conversions and successful sales
  16. Number of exits
  17. A/B testing to see which page converts better

3 key things Web analytics helps you do

  1. Measure

Web analytics makes it easier and possible for you to measure success the way you would measure a projects that has a target of set goals.

The amount of footfall is the key and the more traffic you can drive to your website the closer you are to achieving your desired goals.

It allows you to measure the success of your online campaigns and the number of footfall falling on your website because of this which ultimately helps you decide which would be the best strategies to adopt for achieving success.

  1. Adapt

Once you learn to measure successfully the failures and successes of your website, and have set your goals, you will be able to identify the best ways to improve your website to help you on the path of successfully achieving those goals.

The data provided by your analytics can be used to adapt to the latest technologies by observing the latest trends and gadgets that your visitors are visiting from. It helps you to figure out the best device to target your marketing strategies on by helping you gather information on which devices are you getting maximum traffic through. This will in-turn let you optimize your website according to that device.

  1. Develop

Your online strategy can have certain bits of analytical data built into them which will allow you to develop and effective marketing strategy.

The most important of these should be your site’s referrals that are driving traffic to your website. This will help you to assess where your visitors are coming from apart from the SEO you have, and allows you to understand the impact it has on your website.

Once you have this information you can optimize your website by building stronger links, better posts, stronger rapport with external partners and everything else that is affecting the footfall to your website in the most positive way.

It can also help you figure out the pages and content that proved to be the most popular so that you can develop a stronger digital strategy with these pages and contents.

Web analytics can also tell you which regions give you the maximum number of visitors which in-turn opens up new platforms for you to generate new leads and possibilities for your business. If you could tailor your strategies according to the regional needs of the area, you are looking at a possible market for yourself.

Bharath Bhushan SEO

What is Google Data Studio ?

What is Google Data Studio ?

Google Analytics team released some very exciting news: Google Data Studio will be available to everyone by December 2016! There will still be the robust Data Studio 360 for enterprises, but a standard version will be available to all soon to create beautiful and insightful visualisations.

Google Data studio provide’s a 360-degree view for business users with their most important metrics in one place, updated in real time, and available on all of their devices (i.e.)
including Ad Words, Big-query, Google Sheets,Data Visualisation, SQL,Google Analytics,Google Tag Manager and others.

How Google Data Studio works & advantages of Google Data Studio.

  • Bring multiple GA accounts together in one place
  • Highlight data for non GA users
  • Customise and brand your report to your own style guidelines
  • Connecting your data in one place
  • Modifying your report with awesome graphs
  • A graphical Designer tool with online publishing so data can be shared from a central location
  • The dashboard visualisations are best in class and continually updated from the community.
  • Google Data Studio gives you the insight to stay on top of opportunities and risks

Google Data Studio brings together all your data at one place– from all your data sources – so you can start analysing and visualising it in seconds.

For example, you can pull in data from Excel spreadsheets,Google Analytics,Google Adwords,SQL,Ad-Mod, on-premise data sources and SQL databases.

In this Digital world Stay on top of opportunities & trends while you’re on the go. Google Data studio is purely hosted in the google cloud, built for the modern, mobile workplace. Easily access your data across all your desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

More about Google data studio coming soon!

 

PS: Research : Google & online-behavior

Google (finally) launches cross-device retargeting

Google Ad-word’s The big change is here, Google has enabled cross-device re-marketing for google signed-in users.

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Image Source : Marketing Land

Soon advertisers will be able to reach users across devices with Google re-marketing campaigns.

Mobile phones have created new ways for consumers to engage with brands, often blurring the physical and digital worlds. People research products online and go into a store to buy. They see a brand on TV and then go online to learn more. Or they watch mobile videos on their commutes that inspire them to book a trip when they’re back home on their laptops.

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However your audience engages, only Google has the scale and the tools to help you reach people in the moments that truly matter and measure impact across devices and channels.

 

Source News : Marketing Land Please visit Marketing Land  & Google Adwords Blog for the full article.

 

Top skills you need for success in digital marketing

Top  skills you need  for success in digital marketing

Communication Skills: Digital Marketing is the team which has to communicate with its clients’ prospects, & target audience through online advertising (i.e.) text, image or video ads. The quality of this communication skills  will indeed determine the outcome of any digital marketing campaign.

Being able to work in a team, knowing how to manage team & time  under pressure and communication skills are all essential in an environment where individuals have to rely on team effort.

Digital marketing is about working with other team members and the ability to get on with others while under pressure is crucial.

Search engine optimization:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t just about getting your website found online anymore. As Google’s search algorithm matures, businesses are becoming more aware of the importance of implementing whitehat solutions like content marketing and guest blogging. SEO is certainly not dead – in fact, it is growing, changing and evolving at a rapid rate.

  1. The need to understand how to conduct keyword research
  2. Optimizing your content, website and blog for organic earned search.
  3. On-site optimization, technical SEO and off-site optimization
  4. Content marketing.
  5. Organic SEO knowledge in combination with Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

What the Experts Say about SEO:

“SEO is still as popular as ever and there is a big demand for those with both sets of skills (SEO and PPC).”

Search engine Marketing:

The demand for Google Adwords – Pay Per Click (PPC) consultants & executives are in demand as businesses begin to see the important role Google Adwords – PPC plays in bringing targeted traffic to their website and convert some leads into clients.

There are two parts in Google Adwords here.

  1. Optimizing your content, website, and blog for organic earned search for Good quality score in Google Adwords
  2. Paying for clicks, using Google’s AdWords. PPC

The Building earned authority to rank high on search engines takes time and it is no quick fix. PPC as a required skill for their organizations, and one of the most important and growing facets of SEM is pay-per-click (PPC). In order to demonstrate your abilities in this area, you need to show that you have the research and analytical skills required to create and execute a strong PPC plan that aligns with an overarching marketing strategy.

Develop Social Media skills with technology tools and platforms:

Social media marketing involves many moving parts. It is complex and you need to understand the various social networks and social media marketing tools that allow you to leverage your efforts.The Social Media marketer’s job in the past was often about managing the advertising agency. But now they need to understand Social tools. What do some of these tools & technologies look like?

Free tools

There are a vast arrange of free tools. Some of these include:– Hootsuite

– Tweetdeck

– Canva

– Buffer

– Facebook Insights

– Twitter analytics

– Google analytics Many of these offer premium versions that add other features & functions which a social media manager or executive has to be perfect.

E- Mail Marketing – Marketing Automation : Email marketing & marketing automation platformsThere are hundreds of platforms but here are a few.– MailChimp

– Aweber

– iContact

– Salesforce Marketing Cloud

– Silverpop

– Marketo

Content marketing :Content is the foundation for Digital Marketing. You need images, blog posts, infographics, free eBooks, and the list goes on.When done well, the benefits of content marketing include increased engagement, improved SEO,SEM,Email,Social Media.

Mobile marketing : The mobile explosion and the rise of smart phones has caught many marketers unprepared. Many brands have a website that is not mobile ready and have no apps to make it easy for customers to engage with you while out and about. This marketing skill needs to be learnt — fast!

Web Analytics: If you work in Digital marketing team or are looking to work in digital marketing you need a good understanding of web analytics. Tools like Google Analytics Google web Trends Google web master tools Having a solid a grasp on the fundamentals of analytics for Instance When a visitor who comes to your site, what pages they visit most, how many visitors become customers, where visitors tend to “drop off” and leave the site—can, quite simply, make you one of the most valuable people on the job.

Map User Paths:

  • visit your website without hitting a product page
  • hit a product page without adding an item to the shopping cart
  • have an item in their shopping cart but not check out
  • go to checkout but leave without buying the item
  • Unique user = an individual person visiting your site
  • Session = a single instance when a user was on your site
  • Bounce rate = percentage of users that visited only one page
  • Session duration = how long a user stayed on your website
  • Pages per session = number of pages a user hit during one session
  • Conversion = what you want a user to do on the site (e.g., complete a form)
  • Identify Key Performance Indicators
  • Set and Adjust Benchmarks

Quick learner: Digital Marketing is one of the most dynamic fields. How quickly you can adapt to the changes in the digital marketing will determine how well you can conceptualize and execute digital marketing campaigns & tools.

No matter what skill set you choose to nurture, there will always be companies looking to fill the gaps in their digital marketing strategies.

Find the following info-graphic By Digital Vidya – Digital Marketing Institute on career opportunities in digital marketing along with the recommended approach to acquire technical digital marketing skills useful. I would love to have your feedback on the insights shared in this creative as well.

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Source of Information & research from: http://www.jeffbullas.com www.digitalvidya.com http://blog.firebrandtalent.com https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com