Let me formally define what web analytics actually is and in my books. The way that I have defined web analytics is it's the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about your website and your competition to drive continuous improvement about your digital presence, your customer needs and prospects which translates into great and fabulous desired outcomes, both online and offline for your business. It's that's more of a formal definition of web analytics.
Basics of Web Analytic:
Web analytics is mistakenly believed to be just the art of logging into Google Analytics or Adobe web trends or IBM. Analyzing all the quantitative data you have related to the clicks and that is indeed a big component of web analytics is all about. But it's also about answering the question about why people do? What they do? and that's where sort of qualitative analysis around surveys and usability tests. Those things come into equation. One of the cool things about the web is not only can you analyze your own performance. We can actually analyze how your competitors are doing which is very cool. You can use free or paid tools. But if you're competing with somebody on the web. You can actually go get their data and you can go understand how they are successful or not.
Learn lessons from what they are doing and go figure out. How to change your strategy in turn. It's also very important to understand that you can serve the needs of people who want to buy from you right away or donate money from you right away. But also, people who are in the process of just considering and that's the difference between kind of people are very close to becoming customers versus people. Who are going to be prospects it's going to take them a while to get converted?
Understanding of Web Analytics:
The last thing is all about understanding that web analytic does not simply affect. What you do on the web, on mobile phones, tablets or desktop and laptops. But actually, what happens to your offline existence. If you have a call center that will be including web analytic. If you have an actual supermarket store or a dealership. Those things would be included. Web analytic and its holistic level is the art and science of qualitative quantitative analysis of your data and your competition's data in order to drive improvements to the consumer experience online and to drive business outcomes online and offline.