In today’s world, information is considered our greatest weapon, and analytics is the forge that creates it. Analytics refers to the process of finding, illuminating, and communicating meaningful patterns in data. Through analytics, you can turn raw data into insights that will help you make better decisions.
By understanding the different aspects of your data, you can find meaningful information that otherwise would be hidden. Let’s explore the simple questions you need to answer to see what your data is trying to tell you.
What is routing individuals to your site?
In this whole new world of technology, we have many end-users coming to our sites from various points. It’s important to track how those users are coming to your site. Is it from mobile, another website, your mobile app, etc.?
Analytics also helps you track where those users are coming from. Are they arriving from email, social media, referral sites, paid or organic search, etc.?
Analytics helps us to keep track of all these things under one roof.
What activities are individuals undertaking once they are on your site?
When the user gets to the site, what are they doing? This “behavior” data helps us know what users are doing on the site.
A user’s “behavior” can be visiting the home page or product listing page, navigating on-site, filling out a contact us form, or visiting multiple pages on the site.
The concept of “behavior” is not only limited to what pages they visited, it also takes into consideration how they interacted with the pages or website.
For example, in “Adobe Analytics” events are configured to trigger when an action is taken, like when a user submits a form on the site. When a user submits the form, a predefined set of events fire.
What are the outcomes of visits?
Depending on the business model, this may include online purchases, customer service information found, lead generation forms completed or all of the above.
If the brand transaction is completed through a distributed channel, the metrics may be slightly different, but still give a much clearer picture of your customers’ needs.
By setting up analytics goals and enhanced eCommerce, you will be able to tell if your online marketing efforts are truly working.
What are metrics and why are they important?
Metrics are quantitative information about a user’s activity visiting the site or app. They can include views, orders, revenue, and time spent.
They are the foundation of reports and help you view and understand data relationships.
Metrics are used by digital marketers to identify the interaction of the customer with the website so that they can improve the site and create a better experience for the customer.
For instance, metrics can be used to track the number of customers that successfully completed registration on the site. If the number of registrations is low, it could be because the process is lengthy. The form can then be simplified to make it more user-friendly, thereby increasing the number of successful registrations.
Now that you have some insight into what your data is trying to tell you, what are some other things you need to consider?
Third-Party Ad Tags
A third-party ad tag or “ad placement tag” is a snippet of JavaScript code produced from a third-party server that is stored into an inventory space on a mobile application or webpage to show ad creative that was stored on the ad server. Some benefits of the “Ad Server” are:
- It provides effective tracking and reporting of all media tags by type.
- It makes use of a highly equipped tool for tracking and rendering.
- It provides a detailed report, which has information about the conversions, overlapping, and frequencies that allow the individual to understand how and when the target customers are interacting with the media.
There are a number of third-party tag providers. Some examples are DART, Adlens, EyeReturn, EyeWonder, etc.
Testing Tools
Here are few of the tools available to help ensure your website is working properly and sending accurate data to your analytics platform:
- Fiddler: Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all http(s) traffic between your computer and the internet.
- Charles: Charles is also a web proxy. It is able to track and show all the data transmitted and received between your browser and the server.
- Google Developer Tool: Google Chrome comes with an in-built developer tool. You can test the analytics in the developer tool by switching into the “Networks” tab where the http request gets captured.
Bonus for beginners who want to get started right away! Here are some handy Chrome extensions:
- Ghostery
- Google Tag Assistant
- ObservePoint Tag Debugger
- Google Analytics Debugger
- Adobe Analytics Debugger
By regularly reviewing your analytics data, you can identify and fix problem areas quickly and help improve your website’s overall performance.
Good Info!