Module 2: Web Analytics

 Lecture Summary

  • Web Analytics
    The web analytics lecture beings with defining web analytics as the "measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data and introduces us to a thought leader in this space Avinash Kaushik. Avinash's blog is an interesting site for more nuanced discussion and insight to the web analytics domain. Web Analytics is useful tool for online business and e-commerce platforms for many Fortune 500 companies (Amazon, eBay etc.) The lecture discusses the Web Analytics design cycle and point out the 5 Ws of web analytics important to understanding the interaction that people have with your website. As we understand the 5 Ws of web analytics, we also need to understand the distinct nature of the types of web traffic that is directing people to our website. 



    As the lecture continues, we begin to have a more detailed discussion on the types of web metrics that are available to us. This includes the number of visitors and number of visits breaking down how both of these metrics can be segmented. The lecture concludes with defining important metrics used within web analytics (exit rate, bounce rate) as well as various KPIs (conversion rate, average order value, task completion rate, search of search). 

  • Google Analytics
    The google analytics lecture begins with defining google analytics as a "comprehensive web analytics platform". The google platform offers standard reports and allows a level of customization. For example, creating new dashboards. A starter dashboard in Google Analytics would include information like "New Visitors", "Unique Visits" and "Visits by Browser". There are many components of google analytics:

  • Audience Analysis - looks at multiple KPIs across different time horizons
  • Language - looks at language of user accessing the website
  • Location - looks at primary visitors by country and includes metrics like how long a user spends on a website
  • Behavior - New and Returning - looks at visitor type, pages / visits and bounce rate
  • Behavior - Frequency vs Recency - looks at the number of visits for 1st time, 2nd time 3rd time etc
  • Behavior - looks at visit duration, # of visits, page views
  • Technology: looks at browser and OS technologies used to access the website
  • Technology: looks at types of networks people are using to reach website 
  • Mobile - looks at mobile device usage to access the website
  • Mobile: Devices - looks at the type of mobile device is being used to access the website
As the lecture continues, we begin a discussion of how a visitor flows throughout the website. This including starter pages, 1st interactions and 2nd interactions. The lecture walks through the different type of traffic for the website. 

  • Direct Traffic - monitors the direct pages user's access
  • Referral Traffic - looks at traffic directly from other websites
  • Social Traffic - looks at the social networks that are driving traffic to a website
  • Landing Pages - looks at metrics on the main components of the website where users are landing
  • Search Traffic - looks at the main searches that lead to traffic to the website
  • SEO Traffics - looks at at the main searches and where those users are located
In general, this lecture tries to introduce us at a high level to all of the features, capabilities and definitions of the google analytics platform and web analytics. 

Analysis of Materials / Reading

    After reading through the lecture in Web Analytics module, I was interested to understand who the major players in the Web Analytics market and their market share. As I do not have professional experience in this domain, and I am not familiar with this space and the product offerings. I was able to find the chart below (Best Web Analytics Software in 2024 | 6sense, n.d.):




From this chart google analytics is clearly the dominant player in the market with 70% of the overall market share. With the core functionality offered to enterprise customers being the google marketing platform which is a single platform that can integrate your advertising and analytics, so you can act on customer insights faster.

Below are the key offerings for enterprise customers (Murphy, n.d.):

Advertising
  • Campaign Manager 360 -Get a complete view of all your digital media campaigns.
  • Display & Video 360 - Reach today’s always-connected audiences wherever they are.
  • Search Ads 360 - Get real-time data and unified insights for your search campaigns.
Analytics
  • Analytics 360 - Use advanced tools to get a deeper understanding of your customers so you can deliver better experiences.
  • Tag Manager 360 -Manage all your tags in one place for a smarter, simpler way to oversee your marketing




These offerings seem to point of the strong connection between advertising and analytics. From here, I was interested to understand how analytics is incorporated into successful digital marketing campaigns. The article "The Importance of Data Analytics in Digital Marketing" explains how is the data used in the digital marketing to (2023, March 7). Analytics: Key to Success in Digital Marketing). Analytics is used to:

1. Compile Comprehensive Customer Profiles
2. Align Product Performance and Customer Expectation
3. Understand Customer Behavior
4. Develop New Product Features, New Strategies and New Revenue Streams
5. Create Targeted Personalization
6. Monitor Campaign Performance
7. Forecast Demand. 

It seems that Advertising is the clear leader in the usage of web analytics, and I wonder how other functions within an organization could be learning from advertising to better understand how to use different types of analytics to meet their strategic goals. 

Has anyone in the class used lessons learned from using analytics in advertising to get better insights from the data in the functions they support?

References:

Best Web Analytics Software in 2024 | 6sense. (n.d.). 6Sense. Retrieved November 21, 2024, from https://6sense.com/tech/web-analytics

(2023, March 7). Analytics: Key to Success in Digital Marketing. Retrieved November 21, 2024, from https://online.mason.wm.edu/blog/data-analytics-in-digital-marketing

Murphy, C. (n.d.). Google Marketing Platform - Unified Advertising and Analytics. Retrieved November 21, 2024, from https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/

Comments

  1. Eric LewNovember 24, 2024 at 12:45 PM

    Hi Michael,

    I really enjoyed reading your Module 2 blog. The way you section off the different topics and added examples made it easy to follow along and understand the course material. You did a great job explaining the different components of Google Analytics and the different types of traffic to a website.

    Although I have not used analytics in advertising to get better insights from the data in the functions they support, I can understand how it is very possible to skew the audience. Looking at the areas of focus, you can guide the users to a specific area. I have also noticed that better graphs and charts better represent a certain topic, to help represent your perspective. For example, some businesses might use percentages depending on what they are trying to represent. 50% might seem like a lot, but it also depends on the sample size of the people, which paints the bigger picture.

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts regarding this week’s material.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sarah WolffNovember 28, 2024 at 3:50 PM

    Hi Mike, you've provided a great explanation of the lecture content, and covered some interesting ground in your own exploration of web analytics tools and applications. I cannot address your question very well, as I have no experience in advertising, but I have noticed that several concepts from web analytics will be useful in my role providing analytical support to various functional departments. In all areas, it is essential to align metrics to strategy. There are far more metrics you could measure than what you're actually able to focus on, so you really have intentionally select the ones that will impact your desired outcomes. Additionally, the web analytics cycle stuck with me - the process excellence teams I work with go through the cycle of setting goals, tracking and reporting on them, and consistently reevaluating as the core of their operations, and shape strategic and tactical direction accordingly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Noor ShahinDecember 1, 2024 at 7:18 PM

    Hi Michael,

    Your blog provides a comprehensive summary of web analytics and Google Analytics, clearly breaking down key concepts, metrics, and functionalities. I appreciate how you explored market trends, such as Google Analytics' dominance, and connected them to digital marketing strategies. Your analysis of how advertising leverages analytics effectively to drive decision-making is insightful, especially the link between customer behavior and campaign performance.

    Your question about applying advertising analytics lessons to other organizational functions is thought-provoking. It would be interesting to hear examples from peers about cross-functional applications of analytics, like improving operational efficiency or enhancing product development based on similar data-driven strategies. I appreciate the discussion question that allows for collaborative thinking in here.

    ReplyDelete

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