Online Marketing with Web Analytics

Recent web trend suggests that businesses need to adopt a more interactive and responsive web strategy in order to attract visitors and convert them into customers. The change in search engine methodology (such as Microsoft Bing) is requiring companies to have more contents in their websites in order to be searched. It is important for a business to understand how its users interact with its web application so that it can develop effective strategies for expanding its users interact with its web application so that it can develop effective strategies for expanding its user base and engaging its users.

Web analytics is becoming a crucial methodology and tool for companies to analyze their websites' performance and optimize them to achieve business success. Regardless whether the goal is to raise revenue, reduce sales expenditure, or increase visibility, a typical 5-step analysis process includes:

• Defining goals for what you want your website to accomplish
• Defining metrics for measuring these goals
• Collecting data to assess your current performance
• Analyzing the data to review the weaknesses and strengths
  
• Making changes to improve performance

Different types of business may collect different metrics for their measurements. Yet metrics are only good if they can be used for decision-making. The more valuable metrics are those capable of tracking the area of the application that the users spend the most time in. For optimizing sales, metrics such as pageview (which only approximate value) are less useful than the comprehensive ones like the average revenue per user (APRU) and customer lifetime value (CLV). Other frequently used metrics for measuring performance include bounce rate, visitor acquisition, trend of basic parameters, and search analytics.

Businesses often use evaluation methods to analyze its users' web behavior and improve conversion rates. These methods include:

• Perform 'split testing' to create different versions of your site and measure how user behavior is affected by the difference.
• Conduct a 'conversion funnel analysis' to calculate conversion rates across multiple steps of user engagement (e.g. from accessing the front page to the pricing page to the account creation page)
• Perform 'Click Tracking' to record every click made by a visitor and identify important links and buttons
• Conduct 'Event Tracking' to measure what the users do on your site
• Measure relevancy, not your ego so that you can focus on what is important to your business

AOL, in its effort to promote quality and increase sales, has incorporated web analytics into its marketing strategies. All of AOL's news editors have computers with analytics tools, social network feeds and Google's trend tracking service. This allows them to collaborate virtually and produce news remotely. AOL also monitors the web traffic in its site aggressively to determine popular articles so that it can focus on writing about subjects on demand. If its users seem to favor news about Hollywood celebrities and sports stars over the much valued "investigative news", then AOL would likely to make changes to meet its customers' need.

Imagine in the future, if web analytics reveals that more people prefer gossip columns and celebrities' drama over world news, then would that be all we get from the web? Further, as web technology continues to evolve, the effectiveness of existing metrics might be greatly reduced and new metrics would be needed for performance measurement. Does this mean we would have to continuously reinvent ourselves?

Sources:

Kirkpatrick, Marshall. "Anatomy of a Blog Post Well Received." ReadWriteWeb - Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking and Social Media. 03 June 2009. Web. 03 Apr. 2010.

Lavenda, David. "Getting Started With Online Marketing." FastCompany.com - Where Ideas and People Meet | Fast Company. 2 Mar. 2010. Web. 03 Apr. 2010.

MacMillan, Douglas. "AOL Moves to Build Tech 'Newsroom of the Future'" BusinessWeek - Business News, Stock Market & Financial Advice. 21 Feb. 2010. Web. 03 Apr. 2010.

Sullivan, Laurie. "MediaPost Publications Microsoft Bing Sends Web Analytics Scrambling." MediaPost Home. 4 June 2009. Web. 03 Apr. 2010.

"The Death of the Pageview." ReadWriteWeb - Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking and Social Media. 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 03 Apr. 2010.