Internet Marketing Glossary
Definition: Web Analytics
Web analytics involves the capture and analysis of information about visitors to your website and their behavior in using your site.
A web analytics solution is required in order to capture information about where your visitors come from, how they use your website, and how successful your site is in converting visitors to customers. After installing and properly configuring web analytics on your site, you can use it to examine many pieces of information and perform vital site management functions, including:
- comparison of traffic sources
- examination of the behavior of visitors
- arrival analysis
- geo-location analysis
- bounce rate
- path analysis
- departure analysis
- visitor segmentation
- funnel reporting
- goals definition
- conversion analysis and optimization
- A/B (split) testing and multivariate analysis
- website/goal/shopping cart abandonment patterns
- intra-site search behavior
- content popularity analysis
- first-time and returning visitor behavior analysis
- demographic data extraction
- establishing a profile of interests for each returning visitor
- detection of clickfraud (and receiving compensation for it)
- detection of hack/spam attempts
- ROI maximization
- detection of traffic leaks
- usability analysis
- measurment of email campaign effectiveness
- measurment of the effectiveness of your onsite ad displays
- measurment of the effectiveness of social media campaigns
Not all web analytics software packages allow the capture and analysis of all the points listed above. There are no free or open source web analytics packages that provide enough information to do advanced analysis. Google Analytics is the best free web analytics software available, but it falls far short of the requirements for serious research.
Click here to return to the ClickScience Internet marketing glossary.