written by Paola Alunni
Measuring and analyzing statistical data concerning the activity of a web page, acquiring both a huge quantity and high-quality data, is essential for those who want to seize the opportunities of a world showcase such as the web. The tools useful for analyzing blogs, social networks, web page activities exist and are collected under the term web analytics. But the ability to extract value from tools, and consequently enhance opportunities, depend a lot on the professionalism with which this information is collected, analyzed, integrated and therefore made usable.
The future of Web Analytics without third-party cookies
The world of advertising has always been attentive to user requests, examining what strikes them and why. Web Analytics allows you to analyze habits and consumption, understanding what worked and what didn’t. For example, by measuring the performance of ads, both on network and on mobile.
However, cookie-less policies will greatly limit this type of analysis in the near future. This is why we return to talk about the potential expressed by first-party data. In order to exploit them, however, one must be able to set up and manage a centralized data lake, a huge archive of data from proprietary sources that the company must be able to extract by transforming them into actions.
3rdPlace has developed a platform capable of analyzing and making a huge amount of data usable: DataLysm is the tool that collects first-party data in a data lake and, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence algorithms, integrates, analyzes and makes them usable for marketing strategies.
Web Analytics and Pandemic
Who could have predicted that a pandemic would break out in 2020? Covid-19 has completely changed the lifestyle habits of all the inhabitants of the planet. There have been brands that have recorded a significant decline in profits while those who have relied on e-commerce have experienced a significant increase. How can a company change its strategies on the run? For example, by relying on analyzing data collected through proprietary technologies that make it possible to understand and intercept, for instance, the best browsing experience. Thanks to Web Analytics tools, it is possible to understand how visitors interact with a site or on the various social platforms, if they do it via mobile devices using mobile apps and so on. All this information allows us to establish further steps, promoting the most sought after and most requested services and products.
Web Analytics: which tools
With the right tools and methodologies, thanks to Web Analytics it is possible to establish the right metrics by analyzing the performance of your website and business and thus improve the customer experience and company performance.
Google usually plays the lion’s share with Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360. A few days ago, the Mountain View giant also proposed two new Machine Learning products: Purchase and Churn Probability. The first helps identify users with a high probability of conversion on apps or e-commerce sites in the next 7 days, the second instead identifies active users who have no intention of visiting an app or site in the next 7 days.
Google Analytics
Let’s start with the classics. Google Analytics is a free and easy-to-use tool able to collect information from a blog, site or proprietary app. It helps you to understand how they work and consequently to grow the business. It offers the possibility of knowing the interactions and needs of users with different tools collected in a single one, returning complete dashboards and reports.
Some of the main capabilities of Google Analytics are the following.
Analytics Intelligence
It allows you to make and analyze specific and in-depth research, returning important data on the performance and functionality of the activity. Data about smart goals, smart lists and session quality are processed through machine learning in order to help you drive more conversions.
Create reports
With Google Analytics, reports can be generated to understand audience behavior and to analyze advertising performance. Thanks to user reports it is possible to:
- measure active users over a specified period, from the last day to the last month
- evaluate the lifetime value
- observe specific user segments created on multiple channels
- analyze the individual user
Thanks to Search Console you can perform queries, or you can analyze impressions, pre and post-click data and therefore all the performance of a site in Google search engine. Search Console also offers a series of tools that allows you to solve indexing problems, related to AMP, or usability on mobile devices, receive alerts if the search engine finds problems and view all traffic data.
Regarding the advertising performance, with Google Ads you can understand the post-click metrics, while for other functions you need to access Google Analytics 360.
Analyze users
Thanks to the behavior reports, Analytics precisely studies the interaction of users with the contents of the website, such as the pages visited, and the most read contents. Whether the search function of the site has been used or not and for which terms but, above all, how quickly the site responded.
The whole flow, from the beginning of the navigation to the conversion, is monitored to help you understand any critical issues or strengths, the abandonment rates or the conversion rates achieved. By the way, you can know all the information on products, purchase time, order value and much more. All reports are available and processed in real time.
Google Analytics 360
Google Analytics 360 is a paid platform that allows you to integrate data from all over the Google world. In particular it offers:
- information updated every 10 minutes
- possibility of unsampled reports and much more data available
- overview of all Analytics data with global or segmented metrics
- possibility to apply filters thanks to the integrated connection to BigQuery
With Display & Video 360, the data of homonymous campaigns can be viewed by analyzing the results. To get a complete overview of how it works while users interact with the site, ads or sales, just connect Analytics 360 to Salesforce.
Other Web Analytics tools
There is not only Mountain View. There are many other tools that can track web performance. Among the most used we find:
- Adobe Analytics, a paid tool that allows customizable features; always with a view to overcoming the silos, it aims to analyze the data as a whole.
- Hotjar which tracks users’ browsing by recording sessions; it offers a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a website.
- Crazy Egg is a tool that tracks visitor interactions with a website, and it is specialized in heat maps.
Tools to monitor web traffic
To study the performance of a website, to know the search volumes and for which keyword it is positioned, there are many other specific tools.
- Similarweb is the tool created by the homonymous start-up that collects, analyzes and measures big data by returning statistics; it also offers a paid extension.
- Website Grader analyzes and reports on the performance of your website, from loading pages to mobile responsiveness, up to information on the https protocol.
- PageRank evaluates the ranking of website, comparing it with competitors.
- Builtwith is the tool that offers an analysis of front-end competitors.
All these tools allow you to analyze the performance of your website, to know the number of visits, the time users spend on the pages, the bounce rate, the pages visited for each session, the clickstream (the user’s path within the site) and drop-offs (abandonments), but above all in which step of the funnel these occur.
They can also offer data on geographical distribution, interests, age, technology used, and browser platform used. They memorize basic actions such as a subscription to the site, a newsletter and much more.
In summary, the Web Analytics tools can
- monitor campaigns identifying both the type and its function up to the results obtained.
- identify the keywords with which a site is found by users.
- allow the reading and integration of data in a quick, personalized, and usable way.
- make a comparative analysis with competitors.
Which tools for Web Analytics: DataLysm
How do you know if a strategy will have positive effects in a defined period of time? The Web Analytics scans, analyzes and verifies the information collected in a specific time frame and allows you to decide which is the best strategy to continue. Web Analytics helps to understand whether to proceed and strengthen the initiatives already implemented or to correct methods and objectives.
To do this, however, you need to be able to manage a huge amount of data.
It is necessary to know how to set up and manage a centralized data lake, an archive of data from proprietary sources that the company must be able to extract and interpret to transform them into actions.
DataLysm is the Augmented Analytics platform that 3rdPlace has developed to offer this possibility to large companies and SMEs that want to grow in a data-driven way. DataLysm is a tool that collects first-party data in a data lake, unlocking their potential thanks to the use of integrated artificial intelligence.
