Web Analytics Tools PDF

Chapter 2 Web Analytics Tools Objectives: After completing this chapter students will be able to understand:  Understand the process of web analytics.  Understand different types of web analytics tools used for different scenarios. ...

Chapter 2 Web Analytics Tools Objectives: After completing this chapter students will be able to understand:  Understand the process of web analytics.  Understand different types of web analytics tools used for different scenarios.  Understand detailed description of Google analytics.  How to install Google analytics and setup a Google analytics account.  Understand types of filters and Tracking traffic channels and Goal tracking.  How to analyze data through Google analytics.  Understand Google analytics dashboards, real-time reporting, custom reports.  Understand other analytics tools like Optimizely, Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg.  Understand Keymetrics, Data source, Segmentation, Dashboard, Conversion, Funnels.  How to make Web analytics work for your website.  The top 5 pillars of web analytics.  How to increase your site's visibility through Web analytics.  Understand how Google metrics help with website visibility. Structure: 2.1 Web analytics: objectives and process 2.2 Web analytics tools 2.3 Traffic & trends of websites 2.4 Marketing automation & conversion metrics 2.5 Keywords, seo, ppc & competitor research 2.6 User behaviour & flow 2.7 Google analytics 2.8 Analyzing data through google analytics 2.9 Optimizely 2.10 Kissmetrics 2.11 Crazy egg 2.12 Data source 2.13 Dashboard 2.14 Goals of analytics 2.15 Web traffic data analysis 2.16 The top 5 pillars of web analytics 2.17 Increasing your site’s visibility through web analytics 2.18 Summary 2.19 Self-assessment questions 2.1 WEB ANALYTICS: OBJECTIVES AND PROCESS Web Analytics is the methodological study of online/offline patterns and trends. It is a technique that you can employ to collect, measure, report, and analyze your website data. It is normally carried out to analyze the performance of a website and optimize its web usage. We use web analytics to track key metrics and analyze visitors’ activity and traffic flow. It is a tactical approach to collect data and generate reports. We need Web Analytics to assess the success rate of a website and its associated business. Using Web Analytics, we can −  Assess web content problems so that they can be rectified  Have a clear perspective of website trends  Monitor web traffic and user flow  Demonstrate goals acquisition  Figure out potential keywords  Identify segments for improvement   Find out referring sources The primary objective of carrying out Web Analytics is to optimize the website in order to provide better user experience. It provides a data-driven report to measure visitors’ flow throughout the website. Take a look at the following illustration. It depicts the process of web analytics.  Set the business goals.  To track the goal achievement, set the Key Performance Indicators (KPI).  Collect correct and suitable data.  To extract insights, Analyze data.  Based on assumptions learned from the data analysis, Test alternatives.  Based on either data analysis or website testing, Implement insights. Web Analytics is an ongoing process that helps in attracting more traffic to a site and thereby, increasing the Return on Investment. 2.2 WEB ANALYTICS TOOLS Web analytics tools are used by online businesses and market researchers to collect and measure web traffic data for the purpose of understanding and improving the effectiveness of a website. The most commonly used metrics in web analytics reports are: unique visitors, visits, time on page, time on site, bounce Rate, visitors’ geo-location, exit rate and conversion rate. Measuring the metrics and user behavior is crucial to know what works and what doesn’t. Further, it’s necessary to implement an effect strategy for the longer term. Here are some of the popular web analytics tools that you can use to gain more understanding about your website traffic. 2.2.1 Google Analytics Google Analytics, a free service offered by Internet giant Google, is one of the most popular analytics tools available on the web, which can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines and social networks, direct visits and referring sites. Integrated with the Internet’s largest paid search platform, Google Adwords, it also tracks display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral. 2.2.2 Woopra Unlike Google Analytics which takes hours to update, Woopra offers real-time analytics tracking. It is a desktop application that tracks page views and gives live feeds about your visitors, including from where they access the website, what pages they are currently on, where they’ve been on your site and their web browser. It can monitor more than one website simultaneously. It also features live chat, which allows you to talk to your customers when they’re on your site. 2.2.3 ChartBeat ChartBeat is another real-time web analytics tool used to monitor the user engagement. One of the biggest differences with Chartbeat is that it continually pings every few seconds to see if the page is still open and therefore, it has a far more accurate reading of which pages are actually getting engagement from readers, as opposed to simply being open in a browser tab somewhere. 2.2.4 Mint Mint is a server-based web analytics tool that tracks traffic trends, HTTP referrers and search trends. Mint is self-hosted and it costs a flat rate of $30 per website. You get the benefit of real- time stats, which you don’t get with the free Google Analytics. And Peppermill, a part of Mint, lets you make any adjustments to make it more compatible for your use with tons of free add- ons. 2.2.5 Piwik Piwik is an open-source analytics tool that provides real-time and detailed reports on your website visitors. It is a PHP MySQL software program that you can download and install on your own webserver. It has a “plugin” system that allows for utmost extensibility and customization. It can track many websites. 2.3 TRAFFIC & TRENDS OF WEBSITES 2.3.1 WebTrends Analytics Webtrends Analytics is a platform for digital marketers to have a comprehensive look at how visitors are interacting with the website. It can measure website activity, mobile app activity and how customers interact with your Facebook page. Besides, Webtrends offers a variety of new solutions, in addition to their core expertise in website analytics. 2.3.2 comScore Digital Analytix comScore Digital Analytix is a powerful web analytics solution to track and measure specific details of your visitors’ demographics. It is capable of reporting and segmentation in real time. In addition, StreamSense is an excellent add-on for video counting. And large sites can be broken into several separate entities for faster and more accurate reporting. 2.3.3 SiteMeter SiteMeter is an analytic program for webmasters to keep a track of visitors coming to the website. It can measure the website’s visitors, what websites they are coming from, and where they are going to on your site. Sitemeter offers two version: Free and Premium. 2.4 MARKETING AUTOMATION & CONVERSION METRICS 2.4.1 HubSpot HubSpot is a marketing software platform that includes all the tools you need to do inbound marketing. With HubSpot, you have access to integrated metrics that span your contacts database, marketing content and website traffic – all in one platform. 2.4.2 Optimizely Optimizely is a website optimization platform enabling A/B and multivariate testing for users to enhance their websites. It enables users with and without technical expertise to make dynamic changes to their websites, test the variations to live traffic, gather immediate results, and start achieving goals. 2.4.3 CoreMetrics Coremetrics is a cloud-based digital analytics product that helps marketers understand how visitors are interacting with the website, mobile, and social presences. It helps marketers increase visitor reacquisition and retention rates, improve multichannel strategy formation and implementation, and optimize budget allocation and marketing mix, including email marketing, mobile marketing, display advertising and social media marketing. 2.4.4 KISSmetrics KISSmetrics is a powerful web analytics solution that helps marketers increase customer acquisition and retention rates. KISSmetrics analytics is focused on people. Most people use KISSmetrics to track individual people. 2.4.5 Online Conversion Insights Online Conversion Insights, one of Millward Brown Digital’s latest tools, offers you the ability to know what your competitors’ conversion rates are and increase your online conversion rates, improve shopper engagement, and grow your online market share. 2.5 KEYWORDS, SEO, PPC & COMPETITOR RESEARCH 2.5.1 Webmaster Tool Webmaster Tool is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results. It makes sure that Google can access your content. It submits new content for crawling and removes content you don’t want shown in search results. 2.5.2 SEOmoz SEOmoz is used primarily for the SEO rank tracking function and the Link Analysis. You can track rankings for targeted keywords, and compare those rankings against competitors. This tool gives a brief idea about the level of competition for the keyword based on the top 10 ranking pages. 2.5.3 Sprout Social Sprout Social is a social media management system (SMMS) with functionality for multiple person teams and a focus on engagement, publishing and analytics. It currently offers users the ability to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Zendesk and UserVoice. 2.5.4 Google AdWords Google AdWords is an online advertising service that places advertising copy at the top, bottom, or beside, the list of search results Google displays for a particular search query. 2.6 USER BEHAVIOUR & FLOW 2.6.1 CrazyEgg Crazy Egg offers the power of Heatmap technology to give you a visual picture of what site visitors are doing on your Web pages. It shows you where people are moving their mouse on the page and where they click. 2.6.2 Mouseflow Mouseflow is a detailed heat map solution that not only generates a heat map of clicks, but also of every mouse click and movement, scrolling and keystrokes. You can view heat maps from different time periods so that you can see the effect of changes that you make on your page. 2.6.3 Clicky Clicky is a real-time analytics solution to see up-to-the-minute activity on your site. You can compare snapshots of time on your site — such as the last 30 days or even last year. It also comes with a Twitter analytics tool that can help you monitor what people are saying about your company in the Twitterverse. Clicky’s data is real-time, so you don’t have to wait around to generate reports you may need. 2.7 GOOGLE ANALYTICS At the mention of web analytics, the most prominent analytical tool that comes to mind is Google Analytics. Even if you have never ventured into the analytics field or pondered over what it is all about, you must have heard about this amazing service offered by web giant, Google. Yes, Google Analytics is Google’s very own website assessment service that generates highly detailed statistics about the performance of a website at different points in time. Google Analytics is used by 87% of Analytic Agencies who provide professional web trafficking services to businesses. Owing to the many features of Google Analytics, many webmasters use this service exclusively, without feeling the need to explore other web based analytical tools. Perhaps the biggest advantage of using Google Analytics is that the services from this tool can be combined with other similar web assessment services by Google (such as Google AdWords and Google Search Console), making a highly comprehensive and insightful analysis. Such an ‘inside’ assessment of a website can prove to be very beneficial for the business, because problem areas can be pinpointed easily – and that too with a lot of evidence. Google Analytics is not only used by IT specialists to tweak a website’s design and layout. Instead, with the many innovative features of this tool, marketers and SEO specialists alike are also using Google Analytics to assess the success of promotional campaigns, the changes to make in them and to pave a way forward for online marketing to yield results. Some of the most notable features of Google Analytics that are widely used by webmasters include:  User segmentation  Custom dashboard  E-commerce reporting (transactions, revenue and sales activity)  Funnel visualization  AdWords and optimizing campaigns 2.7.1 Installing Google Analytics Step 1: Sign up To start using Google Analytics and make sure of its advanced features, you need to have a Google Account. This link: https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount will direct you to the specific page that will help you create Google Account. Since Google Analytics is a free tool available for anyone on the internet to use, once you are logged in to the Google account, you can easily access Google Analytics from the ‘Products’ section on the left. Step 2: Set account properties Setting account properties is necessary because it affects how information and data will be viewed on your screen. Google Analytics is a user-friendly tool, which is why there is a lot of flexibility when configuring your account and deciding how to view data and graphs. Go to the Admin tab of the Google Analytics account and click on ‘Create New Property’. You will be asked the information about the website such as website name and URL. At this stage, you can also decide whether you want Google Analytics to be available as a mobile app or not. You should make sure that you choose the correct time zone, as it will be used in the reports. Step 3: Set up tracking code To collect information and insights about your website, Google Analytics requires a tracking code to be embedded in the website/webpage to be tracked. When you add the website to be tracked in Google Analytics, the system generates a code that you will add to the selected pages. Every such code has a unique ID, which is used to deliver information about a website to the user’s Google Analytics account. From here, reports about the website’s performance are presented to the webmaster for informed decision-making. The current version of the Google Analytics tracking code, Asynchronous Tracking Code, is highly sensitive and records even the shortest activity on a website. 2.7.2 Setting up So you now have a Google Analytics account, you have the tracking code in hand and you have started loving the look of Google Analytics. What is next? Even though data is recorded, and transferred to the reports, and charts on a regular basis, there are a number of things you need to set up before you can analyze the data and analyze the performance of the website. Once data comes in and it is represented on reports and trend analysis figures, it becomes hard to change settings and configurations when you realize this is not how you want to view the results. Therefore, putting enough time and effort to set up the many Google Analytics variables is sensible because it saves up on a lot of trouble later on. Moreover, the information under question is very crucial. A website’s lifespan and a business’s success depend on the results derived from this data; hence, it is important to view it just right and make the most of it by extracting conclusions and deductions that will make sense. To complete these settings, it is necessary for you to answer a few questions beforehand. For instance:  How do you want the data to be segmented as soon as it is ready for analysis?  Which charts and graphs should it be divided amongst?  Will all segments be part of your consideration? The answers to these questions dictate the efficacy of Google Analytics for your website and the data coming in. 1. Account, property and view Before you start, you should understand the hierarch of the Google Analytics account.  Account – This is the account you are using, with the possibility to manage the account and access the account settings.  Property – Properties in your account are the properties you want to collect the data for. It is usually a website.  View – A view is a part of the property you want to closely examine. For example, you can set up different views to track different areas of the website, such as home page, or any external page, traffic from the AdWords, etc.  2. Profiles (users) and filters Profiles and filters are highly useful functions. Multiple profiles, also called views, can be set up by the administration running Google Analytics to limit the information that is viewed by different departments. For instance, a limited profile can be set up for the sales department, while accounts and marketing get to view the detailed versions. This is done by assigning custom permissions for each profile. Filters, on the other hand, are used to segment data coming in. Filters are applied to data before it is extracted, therefore, they change the way you will see the incoming information on your dashboard. Depending on which filters you prioritize, data will be organized in a particular pattern to make it convenient for the viewer to analyze. It is important to select filters very carefully because:  They are used to collect information on specific traffic channels, for example, paid vs. organic channels.  They put a certain part of your website in the spotlight. For example, your focus can be to only analyze the blogs on the webpage.  They separate data coming from different domains. For example, data collected from.com and.org.  They separate data from different sub-domains. Types of filters:  Traffic from IP Addresses – This is applied to the traffic visiting a website from a range of IP addresses only.  Traffic from Domains – This is applied to traffic visiting from a certain domain only.  Traffic from Sub-directories – This is applied to a particular directory on the website like a blog. Tracking traffic channels: Tracking the sources of traffic is very important in web analytics. For a webmaster to know where visitors are coming from and which sources on the internet direct the most traffic to the website, this tracking tool should be used at all times. Traffic is usually divided into paid and organic. Paid traffic comes from sources from online advertising, while organic traffic comes from purely search based sources.  Paid traffic Since every website is looked up using keywords and phrases, integrating Google AdWords with Google Analytics is the best way to get an insight into the channels used. Paid traffic channels can be distinguished from referrer websites by adding tags in their URL. Once this distinction is made, the Google Analytics account and AdWords accounts are connected for data to be integrated. Data related to the cost of having paid channels is compared with the response received via this channel.  Organic traffic Organic traffic is identified by the unlisted keywords used to get to your website. These keywords allow a webmaster to see how effective landing pages were in attracting users to the website. Analyzing organic traffic is very important because it tells a business the keywords that can be incorporated into SEO efforts, those that give returned impressions and the ones that are most relevant to the business’s objectives. Google Analytics also offers a SEO Report feature that can be set up to keep a record of SEO efforts, the keywords that are part of it and the improvements that can be made to this selection of keywords. The best way to make use of organic traffic is to integrate Search Console with your Google Analytics account. E-commerce tracking: One of the biggest chunks of Google Analytic users are those running e-commerce websites. Since online shopping has become popular in the 21st century, there is tough competition among e-commerce websites all of whom are constantly trying to appease buyers and turn leads into customers. For such websites, the e-commerce function of Google Analytics is very useful. Website owners can set up this feature to track sales activity and performance. To organize the information gathered from this tracking function, Google Analytics puts together an e-commerce report that represents the following:  The number of transactions  Revenue earned  The kind of products people bought online  The number of times people visited the store  And finally, the e-commerce conversion rate To enable e-commerce tracking, all you have to do is enable e-commerce function and choose the settings inside the view. E-commerce tracking on your website is not all the Google Analytics account is capable of. If your website is one of those that connect different domains or sub-domains during the checkout procedure, Google Analytics takes care of this as well. With the addition of more codes, the program lets you track activities on multiple domains. Doing so generates valuable data regarding conversion because not every customer who accesses the shopping basket of your e-store completes a purchase. What made him back out? Why did he leave? Will he return to complete the transaction? These are some questions, that can be answered, once the data is collected from all domains and put together in a meaningful manner. On-site search tracking An important visitor behavior to take into account is online traffic searches for items and links on your website after landing on it. On-site search is one of the most important features of a website because many visitors prefer to look for the item you want and whizz through to checkout. However, the level of customer frustration is very high when the on-site search function does not work. This may even be the reason why a visitor left the website mid-way. To understand such a reason, it is essential for you to conduct on-site search tracking. The internal search tracking feature lets website owners analyze the products visitors search for the most, the pages they search on, where they begin the search and where they end it and finally, if search resulted in successful conversions. To enable on-site search tracking, you will have to go to ‘View’ and then in ‘View settings’ to select this search option. Remember, Google Analytics reports for on-site search tracking use the word ‘Search Term’ to refer to internal searching. On-page interaction tracking How are visitors interacting on your pages? Interactions are activities done by users when they find something interesting on your website. Interactions like going from one page to the other are recorded by metrics like page views. However, there are many other actions performed on a website, which do not result in additional page views. How can these interactions be measured? Google Analytics has a number of features that can be used to track on-page interactions that come under one of the following categories.  Virtual page views As the name suggests, a virtual page view is used to record an interaction that has not really generated a page view or requested a new page download. This option can be used to record any kind of interaction that has taken place on the website without going from one page to the other. Virtual page views are an essential tool because most websites have options for flash players, downloadable images, pop-ups, iFrames and flash video that are classified under interactions, and yet do not generate new page views. To record these activities, virtual page views are used. Google Analytics reports display page views in the same category as virtual page views. To separate both results, a new view can be created.  Event tracking Another way to track activities that do not generate page views is by event tracking. This method is useful for interactions like:  Call-to-action buttons  Video players  Advertisement clicks  Internal links clicks Event tracking is a very accurate metric because it does not inflate the page count for a website. This means that the pages that were actually viewed stays separate from the other interactions that did not involve new pages. Being a frequently used tool, Google Analytics enables users to categorize and organize events by labeling them and assigning values as well. On-page interactions that are monitored using event tracking are then divided into various categories, making it easier for webmasters and analysts to identify the type of interaction at a future date. Goal tracking Goal tracking is the essence of converting visitors into customers. With this feature, Google Analytics enables website owners to gauge the efficacy of their call to action buttons and signs. Every website has a final objective that it aims to achieve. To reach this final objective of sales revenue, many smaller objectives and goals are first targeted. For some, minor goals may be newsletter subscriptions, while for others it may be sharing web content on the social media. Either way, these actions need to be tracked because they are inputs for conversion rates calculated by Google Analytics. The frequency with which customers are reaching these goals is an important indicator of what more can be done to help visitors to convert easily. By setting up goal tracking, small actions taken on a website can be recorded and analyzed. Go to the ‘View’ in the ‘Admin’ tab to create new goals. Have in mind that you are allowed to create up to 20 goals per view. Once you have set up your goals, you will be able to track the performance of the goal from the ‘Reporting’ tab of the account. Social media integration The social media report displays the results of the activities and interactions on social pages that you have listed. The traffic sources report has a detailed section for social data in which details about the revenue earned via social media, visit durations on different forums like Facebook and Twitter and the number of pages viewed are recorded. Because of the immense popularity of social media, a website is usually integrated with social forums so that a visitor is direct by and forth between both sources. To measure and keep an eye on which social sources are being viewed the most and why, social media reports are an essential tool used. Goal funnel visualization A funnel is the series of steps a visitor takes to get to the end of the conversion cycle. The goal funnel visualization lets website owners define a funnel for every URL destination goal. An analysis of the funnel is a great starting point for eliminating potential hurdles because of which visitors leave the website before reaching the conversion page. Hence, this feature makes it possible to assign a particular goal with a predefined funnel path so that conversion dropouts can be assessed easily. 2.8 ANALYZING DATA THROUGH GOOGLE ANALYTICS Now that you have set up Google Analytics, explored the various features in it and understood how to use those to gather insights, it is now time to start making sense of the data gathered. On their own, analytics data often do not make much sense, but when the same is put together with a lot of other information, compared and contrasted with existing and benchmark levels, a new picture starts to form. There are many analysis features in the Google Analytics account that make it easy for webmasters to understand and assess how well a website is performing, and what more can be done to up its ranking. These tools gather in-depth information from a business’s website, transfer it to the Google Analytics software and then present it in a comparable form that is easy to read. The six most useful Google Analytics features for data analysis are: 1. Advanced segments Using advanced segments, webmasters can analyze a specific segment of the population that visits a website in isolation. This tool works as a filter to assess the behavior, reaction and response of one kind of customer segment or traffic that may have visited your web page. For instance, if you want to analyze the segment of the traffic that actually purchased something from your e-store, the number of these visitors can be isolated and then compared to the total visitors who landed on the page. The advanced segments feature is a custom feature, meaning, every business owner using Google Analytics can create segments that are the most relevant to the website. Google Analytics gives users the option to apply:  All sessions segment – Applies to all reports and displays all data gathered.  Single segment – Represents one sub set and information about it.  Multiple segments – Lets you compare two sub sets of the traffic under question. In order to create custom segments, go to the ‘Audience Overview’ and click on the option ‘+Add Segment’. You will be able to choose different settings in order to create an advanced segment you want to track through Google Analytics.  2. Content experiments Content experiments feature is another useful feature inside Google Analytics that lets webmasters chooses from a variety of website designs and layout. It gives the business owner the power and confidence to design a website in the best possible manner in order to get the most conversions. With this tool, no longer do website designer make guesses about how to display content and on which layout. For instance, up to 10 variations of a landing page are given by Google Analytics, each of which can be implemented by webmasters to maximize conversion rates. Perhaps the biggest advantage of using content experiments is that it lets business owners post all 10 variations of the landing page simultaneously via ten different URLs! Hence, taking web analytics to a whole new level. 3. Annotations Annotation is reporting feature that is very useful for webmasters while assessing data gathered from website usage. Using this tool, those conducting assessment and analyzes can make notes on graphs and pie charts to pinpoint anomalies and unusual occurrences. Since analysis reports are shared, and analyzed by multiple people at the same time or even at different points in time, annotations promote sharing notes and knowledge regarding the analysis being conducted. This way, the team of web analysts is able to arrive at unanimous conclusions about a website’s performance. Use the arrow below the charts to access the annotations or to create a new one. 4. Dashboards The best way to conduct a detailed website analysis, and yet only go through the most important details, is by viewing a dashboard. A dashboard is like a snapshot of the most viewed metrics and the most important trends that a webmaster needs to view as soon as he signs into his account. Therefore, it represents a collection of widgets enabling a user to see a quick overview of reports and assessments for decision-making. Within this collection, a number of metrics can be stored, analyzed and contrasted because important decisions are based on them. Google Analytics dashboards can be completed customized and easily managed.  5. Custom reports With custom reports, all users of Google Analytics can make their very own reports in order to assess the performance of a website. Analysts can chose which metrics to represent, which dimensions to use, and how to display all the information and data. The option to customize all reports enables business owners to make assessment reports highly relevant to their field and industry. Instead of using predefined formats, custom reporting lets users give new and varied directions to web analytics so that new solutions can be derived from existing data samples. The option for creating custom reports can be found under ‘Customization’ tab in the navigation menu of the account. 6. Real-Time reporting Ever wished you could witness what visitors are doing on your website this very moment? The Real time reporting option inside Google Analytics account lets you do just that. Real time reporting allows webmasters to monitor what happens on the website as and when it happens. It gives owners a chance to view which content is more popular, how visitors reacted to it, and the times that the website is most viewed. Such a feature is one of the biggest strengths of Google Analytics because it moves away from many other traditional analytic tools that record and then report. The opportunity to witness action in real time reduces the time between the activities and the corrective measures taken to fix problem areas. With real time reporting, analysis reports are updated every few seconds as more and more hits are recorded. When using this feature, you can get hold of the following information:  The number of people on your website at that particular point in time  The pages or events they are viewing  The geographic locations they belong to  The sources of traffic through which they were referred  The kind of conversion that has taken place, if any 2.9 OPTIMIZELY Optimizely is an optimization platform to test and validate changes and the present look of your webpage. It also determines which layout to finally go with. It uses A/B Testing, Multipage, and Multivariate Testing to improve and analyze your website. A wonderful feature of Optimizely is that you do not need to be a technical expert. You just need to insert a deployed code provided by Optimizely in your HTML. After putting it, you can trace anything, take any action, and make any changes in your website. Optimizely provides you administrative and management functionality to let you create account, organize projects, and experiment. This facility helps you in tracking clicks, conversions, sign-ups, etc. You are allowed to run tests and use custom integrations with Optimizely interface. All you need is −  Set up an account on Optimizely and add a generated script.  Once you are done with it, select your test pages. It implies the factors you want to run test on.  Set Goals. To set goals, click on the flag icon at the top right of the page and follow up the instructions. Check metrics you are looking for. Click Save.  You can create variations with the usual editor like changing text and images.  Next step is monitoring your tests. You need to test which landing pages are performing well. What is attracting the visitors? What is the bounce rate? Understand the statistics, filter the non-performing areas, and conclude the test.  You can run multipage tests using javascript editors. Optimizely gives you a better understanding of conversion rate optimization and running tests. 2.10 KISSMETRICS KISSmetrics is a powerful web analytics tool that delivers key insights and user interaction on your website. It defines a clear picture of users’ activities on your website and collects acquisition data of every visitor. You can use this service free for a month. After that, you can switch on to a paid plan that suits you. KISSmetrics helps in improving sales by knowing cart-abandoned products. It helps you to know exactly when to follow up your customers by tracking the repeat buyers activity slot. KISSmetrics helps you identify the following −  Cart size  Landing page conversion rate  Customer activity on your portal  Customer bounce points  Cart abandoned products  Customer occurrence before making a purchase  Customer lifetime value, etc. 2.10.1 Summarizing KISSmetrics  It gets you more customers by not letting you lose potential customers and maintaining brand loyalty.  It lets you to judge your decisions where you are playing right.  It helps you identify data and trends, which contribute in customer acquisition. 2.10.2 Best Features of KISSmetrics  Ability to track effective marketing channels.  Figure out how much time a user takes to convert.  Determine a degree of which user was engaged with your site.  A convenient dashboard. You do not need to run around searching for figures. Installation Just sign-up for an account and customize accordingly. Tracking Add a java snippet under tag of the source code of your website. Event Setting By default, KISSmetrics sets two events for you − visited site and search engine hit. To add more events, click on new event, add an attribute and record an event name. Setting up Metrics Click on create a new metric. Select your metric type from the list. Give metric name, description, and event. Save metric. Define Conversions Define your conversion and track them. Select number of times event happened. Give metric name and description and select event. Save metric again. KISSmetrics can track web pages, mobile apps, mobile web, facebook apps, and can blend all data into one. You don’t need the multiple analytics platforms. 2.11 CRAZY EGG Crazy Egg is an online analytics application that provides you eye-tracking tools. It generates heatmaps based on where people clicked on your website. Thus, it gives you an idea on where to focus. It lets you filter data on top 15 referrers, search terms, operating systems, etc. To use Crazy Egg, a small piece of JavaScript code needs to be placed on your site pages. Once the code is on your site, Crazy Egg will track user behavior. Your servers will create a report that shows you the clicks on the pages you are tracking. You can review the reports in the dashboard within the member’s area of the Crazy Egg site. Setting up Crazy Egg is a quick and easy task. It offers you insights in four different ways −  Heatmaps − It gives you a defined picture of where visitors who clicked on your page. Where you need to make changes so as to improve conversions.  Scrollmaps − It gives you insights of to what length people scroll down on your page. With Crazy Egg, you can ensure where people leave your page and where to hold them exactly and where to add more to hold them for longer.  Overlay Tool − It gives you overlay report of the number of clicks occurring on your website. You may be able to get more on it.  Confetti − Confe dis nguishes clicks for you segmented by referral sources, search terms, etc. Now, you know the origin of your clicks, so you uncover the traffic sources. Put extra efforts there and you will earn more traffic and revenue. 2.11.1 Installation Insert JavaScript code on source code of your website. Crazy Egg will by default track the user behavior. The servers generate reports providing you the view. Set dashboard to review the reports. 2.11.2 Key metrics You need to find a few key metrics for your business. You have a website and it has a tracking code in it. Now, you need to make sure what are you going to measure. Analyzing may help you retain your customer and hold them. 2.11.3 What to Measure 2.11.3.1 Audience  Pageviews − Pageviews is the number of views of a page. Mul ple pageviews are possible in a single session. If pageviews is improved, it will directly influence AdSense revenue and average time on website.   Bounce rate − Bounce rate reflects the percentage of visitors returning back only a er visiting one page of your website. It helps you to know how many visitors do so. If the bounce rate of a website increases, its webmaster should be worried.  Pages per session − Pages/session is the number of pages surfed in a single session. For example, a user landed on your website and surfed 3 pages, then the website pages/session is 3.  Demographic info − Demographic data shows Age and Gender. With the help of Demographic Info, you can find the percentage of Male/Female visitors coming to your website. Analyzing the ratio of this data, you can make a strategy according to genders. Age group data help you find what percentage of age group visiting your website. So, you can make a strategy for highest percentage of age group visitors.  Devices − This data shows the devices info. In devices info, you can easily find how many percentage of visitors come from mobile, how many come from desktop, how many come from tablets, etc. If mobile traffic is high, then you need to make your website responsive. 2.11.3.2 Acquisition Traffic sources − In the acquisi on, you have to check all your sources of the traffic. Major sources of the traffic are −  Organic traffic is the traffic coming through all search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing....)  Social traffic is the traffic coming through all social media platforms (like − Facebook, Twitter, Google+,...)  Referral traffic is the traffic coming through where your website is linked.  Direct traffic is the traffic coming directly to your website. For example, typing the url of your website, clicking on the link of your website given in emails, etc.   Source/Medium − This metrics gives you an idea of the sources from where you are getting traffic (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Direct, Facebook...). 2.11.3.3 Site Content  Landing pages − Landing pages are the pages where the visitors land first (normally, home pages of the websites are the landing pages). With the help of this metrics, you can find the top pages of the website. Using this metrics, you can analyze how many pages are getting 50% or more traffic of the website. So, you can easily find which type of content is working for you. Further, based on this analysis, you can plan the next content strategy.  Site speed − Site speed is the metrics used for checking page ming (average page load time). Using this metrics, you can find which page is taking more time to load, how many pages have high load time, etc. 2.12 DATA SOURCE Data sources are simply the files created on DBM or feed. The objective of keeping a data source is to encapsulate all information in one stack and hide it from the users, e.g., payroll, inventory, etc. 2.12.1 Server Logs Log files list actions that take place. They maintain files for every request invoked, for example, the source of visitor, their next action, etc. Server logs is a simple text file that records activity on the server. It is created automatically and maintained by server’s data. With the help of a server log file, you can find the activity detail of the website/pages. In activity sheet, you can find the data with IP address, Time/Date, and pages. It gives you insight on the type of browser, country, and origin. These files are only for the webmasters, not for the website users. The statistics provided by server log is used to examine traffic patterns segmented by day, week, or a referrer. 2.12.2 Visitors' Data Visitors’ data shows the total traffic of the website. It can be calculated by any web analytics tool. With the help of visitors’ data, you can analyze your website improvement and can update your servers accordingly. It may comprise of −  A top-level view of metrics  Age and Gender of visitors  User behavior, their location and interests  Technology they are using, e.g., browsers and operating systems  Breakdown of your website on devices other than desktops  User Flow 2.12.3 Search Engine Statistics Search engine statistics show the data that is acquired by organic traffic (as shown in the image given below). If the search engine traffic of a website has improved, then it means the website search ranking for the main keywords has improved. This data also helps you to −  Find the revenue generating keywords and the keywords those are typed in search engine by visitors.  How different Search Engines affect your data.  Where you are lagging and where you need to focus. 2.12.4 Conversion Funnels Conversion funnels is the path by which a goal (Product purchase, Lead form done, Service contact form submitted, etc.) is completed. It is a series of steps covered by the visitors to become customers. It is explained in the “Bertus Engelbrecht’s” image, given below. If more numbers of visitors are leaving the website without any purchase, then you can use conversion funnels to analyze the following −  Why are they leaving the website?  Is there any problem with the conversion path?  Is there any broken link in the conversion path or any other feature that is not working in the conversion path? Conversion funnels help you visualize the following aspects in the form of graphics −  The hurdles the users are facing before converting  Where the emotional behaviors of the users alter   Where the technical bugs become nuisance for the customers 2.12.5 Segmentation Segmentation is the process that segregates the data to find the actionable items. For example, you can categorize your entire website traffic data as one segment for a “Country,” and one for a specific City. For the users, you can make the segments as one who purchased your products; one who only visited your website, and likewise. During the remarketing, you can target those audiences with the help of this segment. 2.12.6 Data Segmentation Data segmentation is very useful to analyze website traffic. In analytics, you can analyze traffic insight with the help of segmentation. The following image shows how to add segments in Google analytics. For a website, you can segment total traffic according to Acquisition, Goals, and Channels. Following are the types of acquisition segmentation − Organic Traffic − It shows only the organic traffic of the website. You can find which search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Aol, etc.) is working for you. With the help of organic traffic, you can also find the top keywords that send traffic to your website. Referrals Traffic − This segment shows the total referrals traffic of the website. With the help of this segment, you can find the top referrals website that send traffic to your website. Direct Traffic − This segment helps you find the traffic that visit your website directly. Social Traffic − With the help of social segment, you can analyze social traffic. How much traffic you are getting from social media? In social media, which platform (Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc.) is sending traffic to your website. With the help of this segment, you can make future social media strategy. For example, if Facebook is sending the highest traffic to your website, then you can improve your Facebook post frequency. Paid Traffic − Paid traffic segment captures traffic through paid channels (Google AdWords, Twitter ads...). 2.12.7 Analysis Using Segmentation When you are done with your segments (collected the data from segments), then the next step is analysis. Analysis is all about finding the actionable item from the data. Example Let’s map a table for analysis. Month Jan Feb Mar April May June July Aug Sep Organic 40K 42K 40K 43K 45K 47K 57K 54K 60K Referrals 5K 4K 5K 4K 6K 5K 4K 3K 4K Social 1K 1K 2K 4K 2K 3K 5K 5K 4K Analysis From the above table, you can see that your organic traffic is growing (improved 20k in 9 months). Referrals traffic is going down. Social traffic has also improved (1k to 4k). Find out the pages that send traffic in organic traffic. Analyze them. Find out which social platform is working for you Actionable Add new pages according to organic traffic sender pages. Focus on the social media platform that is sending the highest traffic. Find why your referrals traffic is going down. Is any link removed from the website, which was sending traffic earlier? 2.13 DASHBOARD A dashboard is an interface showing graphical status of the trends of your business key performance indicators. This helps you to take instantaneous and intelligent decisions. It gives you a visual display of important data that can be encapsulated in a single space to let you monitor it briefly. 2.13.1 Dashboard Implementation In Google analytics, you can create dashboards according to your requirements. Dashboards are used for finding data. With the help of dashboards, you can quickly analyze the data. In dashboard, you must create widgets as per your requirements. The following image shows how to create a dashboard − 2.13.2 Types of Dashboards You can create dashboards according to your requirements. Following are the main types of dashboards − SEO dashboard Content dashboard Content dashboard Website performance dashboard Real time overview dashboard Ecommerce dashboard Social Media dashboard PPC dashboard In every dashboard, you have to create widgets. Widgets are form in graphical or in numbers. For example, if you want to create a dashboard for SEO, you have to create a widget for the total traffic, for the organic traffic, for the keywords, etc. You can analyze these metrics with the help of SEO dashboard. If you want to create a dashboard for website performance, then you have to create a widget for website avg. page load time, Website server response time, Page load time for mobile, and Check page load time by browser. With the help of these widgets, you can easily analyze the website performance. 2.13.3 Metrics for Every Dashboard Search Engine Optimization (SEO) − Organic traffic, Website total traffic, Keyword used in Organic, Top landing pages, etc. Content − In content dashboard, you have to monitor traffic for blog sec on, Conversion by blog post, and Top landing page by exit. Website Performance Dashboard − Avg. page load me, Mobile page load me, Page load time by browser, and Website server response time. Real Time Overview Dashboard− In real time overview, you can set a widget for real time traffic, Real time traffic source, and real time traffic landing pages. Ecommerce Dashboard − In ecommerce total traffic, Landing by products, and Total sale by products. Social Media Dashboard − In social media traffic by social media channel, Sale by social media, most socially shared content. PPC dashboard − In pay per click (PPC) dashboard, you need to include clicks, impressions, CTR, converted clicks, etc. 2.13.4 Conversion Conversion is when a user visits your page and performs an action, for example, purchase, sign- up, download, etc. 2.14 GOALS OF ANALYTICS Goals are used in analytics for tracking completions of specific actions. With the help of goals, you can measure the rate of success. Goals are measured differently in different industries. For example, in an e-commerce website you can measure the goal when a product gets sold. In a software company, you can measure the goal when a software product is sold. In a marketing company, goals are measured when a contact form is filled. 2.14.1 Types of Goals Goals can be divided into the following categories − Destination Goal − Des na on goal is used to find pageviews of a website. Put a des na on URL in the destination field to complete your goal. Duration Goal − You can measure the user engagement with the help of dura on goal. You can specify hours, minutes, and second field to quantify the goals. If a user spends more than that much of time on the page, then the goal is completed. Event Goals − You can measure user interac on with your event on the site. It is called as event goals. You must have at least one event to compose this goal. Pages/session Goal − You can measure the user engagement with pages/session goal. First, you have to specify how many pageviews/session counts as goal complete. Then, with the help of goal metric, you can analyze how many goals are completed. 2.14.2 Funnels Funnels are the steps to complete your goals. With the help of funnels, you can review your goals completion steps. Let’s suppose for an ecommerce company, product sale is goal completion. So, funnels are the steps to purchase that product. If most of the visitors leave the website after carting the products, then you have to check why users are leaving. Is there any problem with the cart section? This can help you improve your product performance or steps to sale the products. Multi-Channel Funnels Multi-Channel Funnel (MCF) report shows how your marketing channels work together. MCF report shows that how many conversions are done and by which channel. In MCF report, you can find the following data − Assisted Conversion − In assisted conversion, you can find which channel has assisted the highest number of conversions. Top Conversion Path − Top conversion path report shows the following picture. In the above picture, you can see that Organic search > > Direct has 11 conversions. It means the user first interacts with your product via organic search. Later on, he/she comes to the website direct and makes a purchase. So, with the help of this report, you can easily analyze your top conversion path to improve your funnels. 2.15 WEB TRAFFIC DATA ANALYSIS It needs to be understood that having a lot of information and statistics derived from web analytic tools and metrics does not guarantee that you will be able to use it for the benefit of your website. In fact, a mere collection of data guarantees nothing. The way it is implemented is what determines its use and efficacy. For this reason, many business owners prefer to use professional web analysts who have experience and skill in this field. They are equipped with the knowledge of how to use the data generated by, say, Google Analytics, and make it work for the company. These specialists work with poor performing websites on a daily basis and use the power of analytics to change their fate. Nonetheless, what professionals do can also be learnt if a business wants to have web analytics services in-house. If you are a business owner who wants to train his own webmasters to understand how to implement web analytics metrics and Key Performance Indicators, there are a number of aspects to master. 2.16 THE TOP 5 PILLARS OF WEB ANALYTICS The following five aspects of web analytics should be mastered by those performing this activity if the analysis is to yield a promising result. 1. Objectives for visitors What do you want your visitors to do? Every business sets goals and objectives that it wants visitors to achieve. These goals usually reflect on how well the business is doing because when combined, all visitors take it closer to the bottom line. The most typical end-result that web analytics assesses is the rate at which visitors turn to customers. Even though not every visitor will fulfill this objective, it is important to lay down clear and achievable goals so that when the analytical process begins, the webmaster knows what is to be measured and which metrics should be used to measure this goal. Enticing visitors to achieve this goal is also not possible until the business knows what action it is looking forward to. 2. Tracking conversion The conversion is important part of web Analytics. Why do you design a website? Why do you want visitors to be directed to it? Why do you want to run an analysis of its performance? The answer to all these questions is to turn visitors to customers. The conversion rate determines how well people perform the action you expected them to. In other words, how many visitors fulfilled the objective defined above. Keeping track of the conversion rate is very important because it distinguishes between two main concepts, i.e. how much traffic passed through your website and how much of it converted. There is a stark difference in both, and novice webmasters who fail to make this distinction, fall into a trap. Assuming that your website is becoming famous and receiving a lot of attention based on increased traffic is quite meaningless because the same can also result in an increased bounce rate. Therefore, unless the conversion rate is tracked, and it reveals an increasing and satisfying number, the performance of a website cannot be gauged. 3. Explain abandonment rates After tracking conversion rates, if you discover that the figure is significantly low, it means that visitors are not performing the desired actions. There are many entry and exit points/pages on a website, all of which are watched by web analysts because a business’s goal of conversion can be achieved at any of these pages. It would not be incorrect to think of these pages like virtual customer touchpoints. If a business succeeds at attracting a visitor enough for him to make a purchase, the touchpoint has achieved the objective. However, if it does not, the visitor abandons his search and exits the website. In this situation, a web analyst should discover and explain why this visitor behaved as such. Effective web analysis is able to tell where customers drop off the most. This point of the website is identified as a problem area and it is then improved with corrective measures. 4. Identify bounce rates While abandonment rates represent the fraction of internet traffic that drops off after exploring the website to an extent, bounce rate represents the chunk of visitors who leave immediately, i.e. after seeing only one page. In 2012, Google Analytics revealed that most websites had a bounce rate of over 40%. Is that good or bad? A smart webmaster will not answer this question without more, in-depth information because a bounce rate stat can be either good or bad. A 40% result can mean one of the following things: Visitors leave your website immediately because they are not interested. Nothing attracts them and they do not want to waste more time. OR Visitors leave your website immediately because they found what they want. They completed the form you asked them to and they signed up in a minute because of a very easy navigation path. Which of these is the explanation of your bounce rate can only be determined once all statistics are pooled in to give a complete picture. 5. Determine cost per acquisition Cost per acquisition shows the expenses you incur for converting one visitor to a customer. Knowing how much you spend is essential because inadequate expenditure is also a big cause of low conversion rates because you have not put enough on the website for people to be attracted. On the other hand, if your cost per acquisition is too high and conversion rates are still low, this indicates that the problem lays somewhere else and the web analyst should look further for the answer. 2.17 INCREASING YOUR SITE’S VISIBILITY THROUGH WEB ANALYTICS Increasing the visibility of a website is exactly the kind of objective that web analytics aims to fulfill. After tons of research and exploration of the insights gained by tracking the activities of visitors, if the results of the analysis are anything but satisfactory, major steps are taken by analysts to up the performance of a website. To do so, the first step is to increase its visibility. One question that every webmaster and business owner asks is, ‘whether customers even know their website exists’. If the answer to this question is full of doubts, all efforts of web analytics are then targeted towards this goal. In essence, increasing the visibility of an online platform is at the heart of analytics because all the research and hard work aims to discover why visitors left the website early, why they did not complete an action or why they leave even before one page is downloaded. Therefore, making a website more visible is the most obvious remedy to a very low conversion rate and minimum internet traffic. In this section of increasing the visibility of a website, we have reached the implementation stage when a webmaster is in control of the data and has all the metrics he needs to begin the assessment process. It helps to remember that increasing visibility is a goal and that this goal cannot be achieved before ample amounts of evidence, data and statistics are gathered to support it. Therefore, deciding to implement strategies to take your website ‘out there’ based on a hunch and guesswork is not the most sensible solution. Instead, the roadmap for visibility should be carved once metrics and analytical tools conclude that a website needs more exposure and promotion. 2.17.1 Why Increase Visibility? Why would you want to increase the visibility of your website? Is it so ‘invisible’ that customers cannot find it? The need to increase visibility emerges from one basic principle of marketing and sales, i.e. attracting new customers. A website or a business usually finds it easy to attract the same customers as long as it provides excellent customer service and its products are reliable and unique. No doubt, repeat purchases are essential for a business to record revenues on a regular basis. Moreover, it is these loyal customers who can be trusted to spread positive word of mouth regarding your business and keep coming back for your services. However, every business reaches a stage in its life when it wants a fresh approach because the existing customers, though very valuable, can only buy or subscribe just this much. To increase revenue beyond the present limits, attracting new customers, new markets and new segments of a demography is essential. Nonetheless, at the same time, a webmaster also has to ensure that the new customers, in other words, the increase in traffic directed to the website, is part of the most relevant target market. Getting visitors on your website, which are not part of your segment usually results in impressive traffic metrics, but staggeringly low conversion rates. Therefore, relevancy is a big criterion to make sure a business attracts only those who can make a difference to its bottom line. This is where increasing visibility comes in. Web analytics helps a business looking for increased visibility by pointing out the areas that need work, those that are already performing well and those that should probably be cut off altogether. It is with this information that a business puts together its most experienced minds to devise strategies and actions that can tend to the problem areas and fix them. The possibilities for increasing visibility through web analytics are many. There is a lot, literally a lot, that an online business can do to achieve this goal. All it has to make sure of is that web analytic results and strategic business ideas are paired in the most efficient and effective manner. 2.17.2 Three Trusted Ways to Increase Visibility Using Web Analytics Using web analytics, the following three ways can increase the visibility of a website’s manifolds. 2.17.2.1 Scan search engines and improve ranking It is hard to deny that the majority of website traffic comes via search engines. The fame and popularity of the search engine giant, Google, is undisputed. So is the fact that even if users know the direct URL they want to visit, they usually punch it in the Google search bar, for convenience sake. Therefore, identifying the search engines that send you the most visitors, who then convert to customers, is the starting point of increasing the visibility of the website. Smart business owners use web analytics to segment the visitors they receive by the search engine they are coming from. The engine that sends the highest percentage of traffic that ends up performing an action is the one to prioritize. Since your marketing budget for search engine promotion is limited, marketing on every engine is a waste of resources. This is why, identifying the top one of two search engines is an ideal strategy. In this regard, search engine rankings play a crucial role. Research into the browsing pattern of internet traffic reveals that most people digging for something on the internet do not look past the first few pages of a search engine. Hence, if you want your website to be visible to the audience you are targeting, increasing search engine rankings is necessary. The first step to increase search engine ranking is by playing off your strengths. Even if you provide an array of services to the market, highlight the one that the market knows you for. This way, when visitors conduct a query for that particular service on Google, your website has a higher chance of showing up in the top few results. 2.17.2.2 Optimize content Within the realm of search engine rankings is content optimization. To appear on the first few pages of a search engine, you have to optimize the content of your website to make it interesting, and beyond that, relevant to the search criteria used by visitors. How do you know what visitors are looking for? The answer is by exploring keyword searches. Most of search engine and content optimization is about using the right keywords. Keywords and phrases, that are most used by visitors and those searching for specific products online, should be made part of the content included in your website. This way, when a user looks up this keyword on Google, your website pops up.  Web analytics helps with content optimization in the following way:  Benchmark search engine ranking – What is your present ranking? Where do you want to get?  Identify top converting keywords – Not only does web analytics identify the keywords that are most used for your website, it also helps track conversions that took place because of particular keywords used. It is essential to know which keywords work for  you because it enables you to leverage on them and increase visibility by incorporating these key phrases in web content.  Finding new keywords – To attract visitors who are presently not using these top keywords, experts suggest that businesses go beyond the most used keywords and look for new ones. According to this approach, a business puts together some of its less- frequently-used keywords in a bunch/combination to target less competitive areas of a market with low-traffic content. 2.17.2.3 Revisit advertising Once you have identified the search engine and the keywords that work best for you, the next step is to revisit your online advertisement strategy. The area of online marketing and promotion is vast. There is a lot that a business can do to up its promotional campaigns on the right medium and with the right keywords. For instance, a website can be promoted with any one or all of the following ways:  Banner advertisements on search engines These are the best advertisements to use in high traffic areas because of the positive impact on conversion rates.  AdWords and pay-per-click ads These are the most cost effective ads. They can be fully customized to target any market segment you want.  Social media ads Promotion on social media is one of the most effective ways to increase the visibility of your website. If your website has a social media tab to attract visitors to related pages, this type of promotional strategy works best.  Starting blogs Just like referrer websites direct traffic to your website, paid or unpaid blogs can also urge visitors to discover your products and services. Since blogs are usually written by third parties, they are perceived as a reliable source of information by customers.  Affiliate programs Even though designing and launching an affiliate program can take time and effort, it can be a great way to spread your reach beyond the demography you have always targeted. Affiliate programs build a network of marketers who can advertise your website at minimal costs. The three approaches combined make up search engine marketing, with improving ranking and content optimization being part of SEO and organic reach, and online advertising using pay-per- click ads, being the part of paid reach. 2.17.3 Google Metrics That Help With Website Visibility Besides using Google Analytics, a lot of website owners use Google Search Console in order to combine the functions and benefits of these tools with increasing website’s visibility. Increasing website visibility with Google’s tools is a top concern for all webmasters who use these tools as their primary web analytics kit. Both of them offer the advantage of having access the information visibility of your website. Coupled with search engine data, a number of metrics you can get from these, and similar tools, can be used to determine how visible your website is on the internet. Since visibility and reach are two of the most important goals of effective web analytics, these metrics are some of the most used measurement criteria to evaluate a company’s online efforts. 1. Crawability Crawlability is a measure of how easily a search engine can find and crawl your website. Appearing high in search engine results is a definite boost to the visibility of a website, because most of those users, who search for websites using keywords, usually do not look beyond the first few pages of Google search. Therefore, if you want your website to be highly visible to the target market, you have to make sure it appears on a rank that is visible and considered acceptable by the market. Appearing on the first few positions may be hard. However, if you use the right keywords and optimize your website, a high rank is not impossible to achieve. Crawlability also encompasses the technical reasons that prevent a website from appearing on high ranks. For instance, any one of the following may be the reason that has a negative influence on the visibility of your website:  A lot of redirected pages  Pages being blocked by the noindex meta attribute  A lot of pages being blocked by robot.txt files  404 Error pages that prevent your website from showing up  Pages that are subject to other types of server errors Use Google Search Console to check if there are any errors on your website: 2. NAP citations Many people who do not want to spend hours on the internet searching for specific websites and products, usually use sources like the Yellow Pages. The Name, Address and Phone citations are crucial because actual people use these to locate online businesses. NAP directories are created even if you have not opted to put your credentials voluntarily. However, if your NAP citations are unclaimed, every time a user searches for your website, the credentials will not be linked to the URL. Hence, it is important that you search the NAP citations that exist for your business, verify the details and then claim them to bridge the gap and increase search visibility of the website. 3. URLs index Website pages that are included in the Google search index are the ones that are visible to users. URLs index is a metric that tells you how many of your website pages are indexed and thus, how visible each is to the search engine audience. URLs index also helps webmasters determine whether there is duplication on the website. For instance, if more pages are indexed than you have on your website; this means that there is a duplication of content on your platform.  4. Deep links Deep links increase the visibility of specific pages of a website. Deep links are links to other websites that have a link to a page of your website. Search engines, like Google, determine how relevant this referring website is and how well visitors will be attracted to the deep link placed. Deep links are very useful because they increase the chances that a website and its specific content pages will be viewed by general internet traffic. Since search engines evaluate relevancy, a website owner should make sure to have quality content on the inside pages so that it can be linked via Google. 5. Branded and non-branded keywords Branded keywords are those that have the company’s name, your name or the name of the brands you sell. There are millions of users on Google, who use branded keywords because they already know that a particular brand exists. The use of these keywords is a good sign in Google Analytics because it shows that either these customers have purchased from you before, or your website’s visibility is high because branded keywords appear in general searches. On the other hand, non-branded keyword searches are done by people who are generally trying to solve a problem by looking for solutions on Google. They may not have heard of you, which is why it is important to point them out so that they can turn into new visitors. 6. SERP ranking This metric from Google Analytics is called search engine result page ranking. This ranking determines a website’s position in search results. Even though this position is important, experts now assert that together with SERP, focus should also be on keyword ranking – a strategy that is part of Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics. While SERP ranking is influenced by factors like geography and social media usage, keyword ranking is a more valuable metric that reflects on sales conversions. Click through rates on SERP Being listed high on Google is no good if visitors are not clicking on your site. Click through rates are a measure of how popular and visible your advertisement or URL is on a search engine because it directly effects the frequency with which users visit your website. Specific content that has a high click through rate should be the benchmark. Geographic reach Metrics that determine geographic reach tell you the location of your customers. Depending on the results of this metric, you can choose to increase visibility and reach in a certain location and reduce spending in another one. Moreover, while assessing geographic reach, it is important to keep business goals in mind because if you want to limit yourself to a certain location. This metric will help you decide. Keywords Keyword metrics are available with every web analytics tool because they help assess how well keywords are used in a piece of content. Keyword metrics identify phrases that are relevant to a business and are used by search engine visitors the most. When a webmaster incorporates the most used keywords and phrases in web content, he stands a high chance of increasing the visibility of the website because it will now appear whenever that particular phrase is looked up. Content keyswords feature was removed from Google Search Console in November 2016, and it was replaced with “Queries” available as a part of Search Analytics. Another tool that can help you with exploring keywords and the potential search volume for specific keywords is Google Keyword Planner. The above metrics are only a few that play a huge role in helping web masters increase visibility of websites using Google tools. Even though other web analytic tools also have a collection of metrics, none is as comprehensive as the features using several Google tools combined, because they provide a comprehensive collection of data to give users the best visibility and reach statistics in the industry. 2.18 SUMMARY  Web Analytics is the methodological study of online/offline patterns and trends. It is a technique that you can employ to collect, measure, report, and analyze your website data. It is normally carried out to analyze the performance of a website and optimize its web usage.  Web analytics is used to track key metrics and analyze visitors’ activity and traffic flow. It is a tactical approach to collect data and generate reports.  Web analytics tools are used by online businesses and market researchers to collect and measure web traffic data for the purpose of understanding and improving the effectiveness of a website.  Google Analytics, a free service offered by Internet giant Google, is one of the most popular analytics tools available on the web, which can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines and social networks, direct visits and referring sites.  Woopra offers real-time analytics tracking. It is a desktop application that tracks page views and gives live feeds about your visitors.  ChartBeat is another real-time web analytics tool used to monitor the user engagement.  Mint is a server-based web analytics tool that tracks traffic trends, HTTP referrers and search trends.  Piwik is an open-source analytics tool that provides real-time and detailed reports on your website visitors.  Webtrends Analytics is a platform for digital marketers to have a comprehensive look at how visitors are interacting with the website.  comScore Digital Analytix is a powerful web analytics solution to track and measure specific details of your visitors’ demographics.  SiteMeter is an analytic program for webmasters to keep a track of visitors coming to the website.  HubSpot is a marketing software platform that includes all the tools you need to do inbound marketing.  Optimizely is a website optimization platform enabling A/B and multivariate testing for users to enhance their websites.  Coremetrics is a cloud-based digital analytics product that helps marketers understand how visitors are interacting with the website, mobile, and social presences.  KISSmetrics is a powerful web analytics solution that helps marketers increase customer acquisition and retention rates.  Webmaster Tool is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results.  SEOmoz is used primarily for the SEO rank tracking function and the Link Analysis.  Sprout Social is a social media management system (SMMS) with functionality for multiple person teams and a focus on engagement, publishing and analytics.  Google AdWords is an online advertising service that places advertising copy at the top, bottom, or beside, the list of search results Google displays for a particular search query.  Crazy Egg offers the power of Heatmap technology to give you a visual picture of what site visitors are doing on your Web pages.  Mouseflow is a detailed heat map solution that not only generates a heat map of clicks, but also of every mouse click and movement, scrolling and keystrokes.  Clicky is a real-time analytics solution to see up-to-the-minute activity on your site.  Data sources are simply the files created on DBM or feed. The objective of keeping a data source is to encapsulate all information in one stack and hide it from the users, e.g., payroll, inventory, etc.  Segmentation is the process that segregates the data to find the actionable items.  Dashboard is an interface showing graphical status of the trends of your business key performance indicators.   Conversion is when a user visits your page and performs an action, for example, purchase, sign-up, download, etc.  Funnels are the steps to complete your goals. With the help of funnels, you can review your goals completion steps.  Increasing the visibility of a website is exactly the kind of objective that web analytics aims to fulfill.  3 trusted ways to increase visibility : 1. Scan search engines and improve ranking 2. Optimize content 3. Revisit advertising  Google metrics that helps with Website visibility : 1. Crawability 2. NAP citations 3. URLs index 4. Deep Links 5. Branded and non-branded keywords 6. SERP ranking. 2.19 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS 1. Explain objectives and process of web analytics? 2. What is the need of web analytics tool? Explain in details popular web analytics tool? 3. What is Google analytics? Explain installation process of it? 4. Write short notes on: a) E-commerce tracking? b) On-site search tracking? c) On-page interaction tracking? 5. How do you analyze data through Google analytics? Explain six most useful google analytics features? 6. Explain below mentioned web analytics tools in detail? a) KISS metrics b) Optimizely c) Crazy Eggs 7. What is a Data source? Explain objective of keeping a data source? 8. What is dashboard? Explain different types of dashboards? 9. Explain goals of analytics in detail? 10. What is web traffic data analysis? Explain the top 5 pillars of Web analytics? 11. How does web analytics help in increasing website's visibility? Explain 3 trusted ways to increase visibility?