Understanding Web Analytics

[thejenn]

Authored by: Matt Bailey

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/bailey/007813.html

A Snippet:

Why are analytics so difficult? Almost every company I talk to wants to know which data table, which numbers, which analytics package will provide answers. The unifying question is "What should we be looking at?"

[The Pilot]

Great idea to put money into a person! But it is a bad idea to toss the expensive web analytics package; unless of course it is no good. To use an analogy, don't hire a top gun fighter ace, throw out the F15 and replace it with a biplane. Your new "top gun" in his biplane will just be 'meat for the migs'! You need to buy the best air superiority fighter that you can sensibly afford and justify. Most importantly you need intelligence to identify the enemy and ideally take them out at long range before they become a serious threat to you.

If you want to get serious, you need to think of web analytics as just part of your business intelligence (BI) data and analytical capabilities. The opportunity and threat of the web stems from the huge amount of business data that can be collected compared to other channels. If you can collect reliable data, and turn it into 'intelligence', you can defeat much bigger competitors. On the other hand if you fail to collect reliable data or fail to turn it into ‘intelligence’, then you can be defeated by both bigger and smaller competitors.

If you can afford and justify a state of the art system, then try vBis from www.site-intelligence.co.uk. As an entrepreneur, I bought and integrated this package into our web based business and reaped the rewards. While vBis collects client side data via tags, it collects and stores data at a granular level on your server in industry standard databases e.g. Oracle or MS SQL. Not only does it come with serious analytical tools built including a visual interface, but the granular level data can be accessed directly and integrated into your own systems.

A number of major corporations, where BI is at the core of their strategy, are using vBis to integrate their web analytic data into their overall BI data. Hence they are able to track their customers across multiple distribution channels using BI data from both the web and their loyalty / store cards. For example, they can measure the effect of an on-line marketing campaign both on and off line, and hence measure on overall ROI.

[MattB]

Your analogy is good in the world of fighter jets, but I have seen many biplanes bring down Mig's that have no pilots in the world of analytics.

It's amazing what a good analyst can do with good data. However, there has to be a solution that allows good data to be found, not just the same charts and graphs, but made prettier. Usually, a good mid-level analytics program will yield much more data (and much easier to use) than the expensive solutions.

The purpose of the post is mainly to have site owners see tha value of getting actionable data, which only a good analyst will provide. Getting an expensive analytics solution is useless if no one is able to get the data out of it. I know of many companies that have the latest version of WebTrends, but only report Unique Visitors as a Key Performance Indicator.