Website Analytics: Mining Customer Data for Profit [7/14/2008]

Website analytics allow web retailers to assess how their marketing campaigns are progressing – in minutes instead of days or weeks when compared to more traditional forms of advertising.

Web analytics is vendor-licensed software that collects visitor data when they visit a website. What and how they collect it depends on the data-collecting software used. Web analytic software can tell retailers such specifics as the total purchased, the pages perused and when a visitor has left the site. All of this information is invaluable to marketing more profitably to online consumers.

The data is captured via what’s known in the online marketing realm as cookies. Cookies are remnants of text sent from a server to a Browser that tracks consumer behavior on a site. Google’s recent release of a free web analytics tool has only heightened interest in it. It specifically allows Internet marketers to track the performance of the online marketing campaigns. In essence, this online search giant has brought this valuable tool to the masses.

Conversion rates are one of the top priorities of virtually all web retailers. A recent E-Tailing Group survey revealed that 46% of internet retailers rated site conversion as a critical element tracked by web analytics tools.

In addition to conversion stats, web analytics software can also track a host of other online visitor activity. Following are some other stats Internet marketers track using web analytics tools.

Shopping cart abandonment: 41% of retailers said this was important to them.

Search marketing: This clocked in at 40%.

User Experience: 35% of Internet marketers said measuring user experience was important to them.

Landing Page: Close behind user experience was tracking which landing page marketers had specifically devised for search marketing purposes; 32% of web marketers professed to using web analytics tools to assess this.

Online marketers also use analytics to refine site navigation (30%); increase average order values (28%); investigate new product possibilities (20%); and reduce return rates (10%).

In spite of the wealth of information web analytics tools provide, more than 50% of the surveyed merchants didn’t know their cross-selling or upselling conversion rates. Experts surmise that data overload may contribute to this. This just means that merchants have to become savvier about mining the important information, i.e., the information that leads directly to sales.

This leads to another basic as it relates to web analytics – education for Internet marketing professionals who are looking to integrate web analytics into their advertising, marketing and merchandising programs.

For forward-thinking retailers, web analytics resources are powerful marketing tools. By harnessing the power they present, online retailers can align their objectives more effectively with customer objectives. This leads to customer satisfaction and increased sales, a win-win for both parties.

For more insight visit Web Analytics services

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