Web analytics and data

Web analytics and data are vital keys to establishing and managing a successful business. It is difficult to overestimate their importance – even large companies with years of experience risk getting lost on the last pages of search results if they ignore analytical data or do not have a well-organized database.

What is web analytics?

Web analytics is the basis of the internet marketing of any resource. It allows tracking, collecting, analysing, and interpreting information about a website’s visitors: what content they are interested in, what platforms they come from, how often they perform targeted actions etc. Based on these data, you can evaluate the results of promotion and draw up a strategy for the development of the business.

What can I analyse using web analytics?

• Number of visitors on a website during a given period (a day, a week, a month, a year). This information can help you to track the progress of the visitors as well as compare when a website was visited the most.
• Time spent by users on the website. To evaluate the engagement of people and interest in the content it is essential to analyse the time that was spent on the page. It allows identifying the most popular product and basing the further business plan on this information.
• Platforms for attracting visitors. Web analytics provides information about channels from which the users come to your website (social networks, advertising, search, external links) and what actions were done by users of each channel group. This indicator makes it possible to understand which promotion platforms are the most effective for your business.
• Socio-demographic characteristics. You will be able to analyse the gender, age, social status, and interests of visitors. These characteristics of the audience can be used for creating advertisements and promoting the website or product.
• Used devices. What devices do visitors of the website use: laptop, desktop PC, phone? This information is important for optimizing the website for convenient use on any device.
• Target actions. Web analytics helps to indicate whether users perform target actions such as purchase, subscription, or registration. This characteristic shows the effectiveness of the promotion.

Web analytics process

The goal of web analytics is to serve as a business metric to promote specific products to clients who are most likely to buy them, and to determine which items a particular customer is most likely to buy. But it is not possible to achieve these goals if there is no organised plan for the web analytics process. Such a process consists of the following steps (which may vary depending on the goal or product):

• Goal setting. The first step is to determine the goals and results that the business is trying to achieve. Such goals may include customer satisfaction, increased sales, or brand awareness. Business objectives can be both qualitative and quantitative.
• Data collection. The second step of the web analytics process is data collection and storage. One can collect data directly from the website or a web analytics tool such as Google Analytics.
• Data processing. In the next stage of web analytics, businesses process the collected data into useful information.
• Identification of key performance indicators (KPIs). In web analytics, a KPI is a measure for tracking and analysing visitor behaviour on a website. It includes bounce rate, user sessions, unique users, and search queries on the site.
• Strategy development. This phase involves implementing the findings to create strategies that are aligned with the organization’s goals. For instance, for creating a content strategy a company can use the data about search queries on their website that shows what customers are looking for.
• Experimentation and testing. It is needed to experiment with different strategies to find the one that gives the best results. For example, split testing is a strategy that helps to find out how users react to different content. It involves creating several versions of content and then showing them to different audience segments to discover which version of the content works better.

Properly configured web analytics provides a complete picture of the functioning of an online business. With the help of analytics data, a marketing specialist can optimize the work of the resource, strengthen effective promotion channels, and reduce the cost of unprofitable tools, develop recommendations for improving the usability and functionality of the site, attract more traffic to the resource, increase conversions, and hence the company’s sales.

But what about databases? A database is a collection of information, usually organized as tables. Data in databases is stored in such a way that it can be easily retrieved and used by a computer program.

Databases are important to businesses because they store information that is essential to the operation of a company, such as a customer information, inventory records, and purchase orders. This type of information can be accessed quickly and accurately without having to sort through a stack of paper records or trying to remember where each piece of data is stored. Thanks to special algorithms used for databases, you can easily find the necessary data in just a few seconds. Also, there is a certain interconnection of information in the database: a change in one line can cause changes in other lines – this helps to work with information easier and faster.

The main functions of databases

• Data storage in one central location
• The possibility of sharing data with many users
• The creation of backup copies
• The control of the users that can access and edit data

Advantages of databases

• Data consistency. Eliminating or controlling data redundancy reduces the risk of inconsistent states. If a data element is stored in the database in only one instance, then to change its value you will need to perform only one update operation, and the new value will be available to all database users at once. And if this data element, with the knowledge of the system, is stored in the database in several copies, then such a system will be able to ensure that the copies do not contradict each other.
• Sharing of data. Files usually belong to individuals who use them in their work. At the same time, the database belongs to groups of users or the entire organization as a whole and can be shared by all registered users. With this organization of work, a larger number of users can work with a large amount of data. Moreover, it is possible to create new applications based on the information already existing in the database and add to it only those data that are not currently stored in it, and not to redefine the requirements for all the data that the new application needs.
• Increased security. Database security is the protection of data from unauthorized access by users. Without appropriate security measures, integrated data becomes more vulnerable than data in the file system. The security system can be presented in the form of account names and passwords to identify users who are registered in this database. Access to the data by the registered user can be restricted only to some operations.
• Application of standards. The integration allows the database to define and apply the necessary standards. For example, enterprise, national, and international standards may govern the format of data exchanged between systems, naming conventions, the form of documentation, and access rules.
• Increase in efficiency as the system grows in scale. By combining all operational data in one database and creating a set of applications that work with one data source, significant cost savings can be achieved.

Disadvantages of databases

• Complexity. Providing functionality is accompanied by considerable complexity. To take full advantage of the database, database designers and developers, as well as end users, must have a good understanding of the database functionality. Failure to understand the principles of the system operation can lead to unsuccessful design results with all the ensuing consequences.
• The cost of the database. Depending on the available computing environment and the required functionality, the cost of the database can vary very widely. In addition, you should consider the annual costs of maintaining the system, which make up a certain percentage of its total cost.
• More serious consequences in case of system failure. Centralization of resources increases the system’s vulnerability. Since the work of all users and applications depends on the availability of the database, the failure of one of its components can lead to a complete cessation of the entire enterprise.

Choosing the right database is one of the key issues when creating your resource. We advise you to focus on the tasks that the website must perform, as well as take into account the nature and volume of data that the system must process.