Wed 20 Aug 2008
Web Analytics Overview
Posted by Emily Croskey under Analytics
Guest Blogger: Emily Croskey
Search Engine optimization is a great way to drive qualified traffic to your website - it is almost required. The question is - how do you know if your Search Engine optimization efforts are working? The answer is - you need to use a web analytics program to find out for sure. Web analytics are analytic measurements of the amount of traffic that your website gets, where people go when they are on your site, how long they spend on your site, what phrases they searched on to get to your site, etc.
Web analytics are crucial to Search Engine optimization because in order to effectively market your site, you need to know what phrases users are searching on in order to find your site. The analytics programs that we use here at TKG are ClickTracks and Google Analytics. With these programs, we can find everything from where users came from (country or state), users in a certain time period (day of week or time of day), what pages they enter/exit on, what forms are being filled out, how many sales are made, and lots of other fun stuff.
Some may think that all of these things can be found on almost every free stats program that comes along with their hosting package. Yes, that is true but a good analytics programs offers much, much more than what is mentioned above. For example, if you wanted to see where users are going to on the homepage, ClickTracks will give you a navigation report that shows which % of users are going where! Let’s be honest, conversions are the most important aspect of analytics. If your site is not converting, then the other stuff doesn’t matter. A qualified analytics program will not only tell you what forms are converting and sales, but you can also configure where users are dropping off in the cart process (cart abandonment rate). You can also see user navigation within forms and their bounce rates.
Search Engine optimization is the most effective way to market a website, and to see it paying off in traffic, rankings and conversions via an analytics program will bring a tremendous sense of satisfaction.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Emily:
Since you work with ClickTracks and Google Analytics, which program do you prefer and why?
February 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Advancement of Web Analytics
Another alternative to web analytics tool available on the net is mvispy.com I have been using the service for past few months and it has worked out well for me. I have been able to do live visitor tracking. MVISPY offers a unique combination of features like real-time visitor data, IP name lookup, conversions tracking (3 ways), email alerts, live or proactive chat, tracking web leads from search engine to conversion, insert leads into sales lead systems, determine what pages don’t work & track click fraud - all while determining what people are looking for, what keywords work best.
Some of the features offered by MVISPY that are not offered by Analytics are
- real time tracking on website
- IP look up with company name address and Jigsaw drill down feature
- Tracking conversion 3 different ways with email alerts
- Live pro active chat features that will pop up after a preset number of page views or visitor length on the site and when arrives at preset page
- SPY shows trails from Search engine to site thru purchase on one display (not done by Google)
- Auto insert of sales leads in sales Lead system
- Determine what pages don’t work by real time bounce data (Gogole has)
- Tracks Click Fraud.