Analytics & Interpretation

Introduction

The year 2017 marks an important milestone in the digital world. For the first time, half of the earth’s population has access to the internet (Van Wijk, 2017). This fact underlines the increasing importance of the online presence for businesses who have the opportunity to gain to larger target markets. According to Admeira, 88.9% of the Swiss population already uses the Internet (2016). Consequently, it is essential for businesses to develop well-designed websites that allow their users ease of navigation while meeting their needs and desires. As simple as this sounds, it can be complex. The topic of the third lesson of the major E-Commerce and Sales held by Sven Häberlin, was “Analytics and Interpretation”. The goal was to become familiar with and understand some of the analytical programs in order to use online marketing as an effective tool.

If it’s not stated separately, the given content is taken out of the slides of Mr. Häberlin (2017).

Interpretation of figures

Due to the complexity of different analytic tools, the lecturer Sven Häberlin predominantly focused on their practical application. The reading and interpretation of figures and statistics is crucial for the understanding and for following implementations. Figures should always be seen in the context of the website's aim because each of them communicates a discrete body of information. This is essential for drawing correct conclusions and choosing appropriate measures.

As in every project, a professional website should have clear and well-defined goals. To achieve these goals there are several analytic tools which can influence the success of the resulting website. In the following section some of these tools will be explained.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free online tool from the US company Google which helps in analysing websites. It gathers data about the behaviour patterns of the visitors of a company’s website, and measures sales and conversion rates. According to Rinnhofer, the tool helps measure the overlap between the interests of the user and those of the provider (2014). A company has to know the needs and wants as well as the user's behaviour to be successful in online marketing. The information can be used to adjust and adapt the website. The analysis of a website is an ongoing process, and therefore will continuously evolve. Every website can benefit from ongoing improvement. When the website has been altered, it is important to check whether the measures made a change.

Google Analytics provides insights into the following aspects:

Audience

The rubric “Audience” sheds the light on the visitors of the website. It provides real-time information about their demographics, interests and their lifetime value for the company. According to Häberlin, Google can estimate the demographics behind every user quite accurately. Even if there are different people using the same device, Google distinguishes between individuals. Criteria like the search- and usage behaviour in combination with information from a Google account give an exact profile of the user behind the IP address. It is even possible to see which device and browser is used to access the page. Furthermore, it can localise users precisely and knows in what content they are interested in. Google Analytics sees the value of each customer, based on previous transactions and purchases.

Behaviour

With the knowledge of the target audience, it is now important to find out how people reach the website and what they are looking for on the site. Google Analytics tracks the steps of each visitor as long as they stay on the website. It records every page that the user visits and measures the visitor's time. In the end, this information can be used to understand what content the users prefer. Referrals show where the visitors come from. This is an instant feedback on the effectiveness of a company's marketing measures such as links or advertisement banners. Referrals also show which keywords people typed in to get to the site. This knowledge makes it possible to set up effective Google AdWords campaigns and adjust the page with SEO. The Google Tag Manager is an additional Google tool which can be combined with Google Analytics to track visitors even more precisely.

Company's profit

All this information can be very informative for identifying target groups and creating marketing campaigns which are tailored to different groups according to their demographic, psychographic or geographical similarities. This information makes it possible to place the right advertisement for the right person, at the particular time and place.

As already mentioned above, the numbers and figures which Google Analytics provides should never be considered in isolation but in connection to the goals of the online marketing strategy.   

Example: A company’s bounce rate is over 50 percent. This looks quite unsatisfactory at first glance. From another perspective, if the main goal of the website is only to inform customers about opening hours or contact information, it is not a great concern.

Conclusion Google Analytics

All the visitors to a website are potential customers for the company which provides the site. The good thing about a website is that a company does not have to attract customers because they are already interested in the product. They only have to convince the visitors to choose them and not the competitors. Therefore, it makes sense to observe their behavioural patterns to provide the right information to them. Doing SEO enables Google to provide customers with matching search results according to their search queries. This narrows down the number of customers that are actually interested in a company's product and services. As a result, potential customers can be turned into actual customers.

Google Search Console

As explained in the previous part, Google Analytics enables the webmaster to track users and their behaviour while they are surfing on a specific website. However, Google Analytics does not provide information about what customers do when they are not on a website yet, but the page is listed in the organic search result page on Google. This is the point when Google Search Console comes in. It helps to understand through which links and search queries the users access your site, and monitors the websites presence in the Google search results. Furthermore, it helps the webmaster check the website for possible mistakes in the code, sitemap, internal links and URL-structure (SEO Küche, unknown). In order to be more successful in the organic search ranking, it is crucial to fix these errors.

Further tools by Google

There are several tools offered by Google that can be used for SEO and AdWords campaigns such as: Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner and Google Test my Site. These tools can be used either before starting a new campaign or for extending and optimizing the existing one.

Google Trends gives information about how often a particular search term is entered into the Google Search and which key words are popular at a certain time period. This can be very useful for SEA campaigns and SEO. Hereby a campaign's keywords can be redefined or adjusted according to a certain trend. As an example: The keyword "Mother's Day gift" is at its peak in May. In order to be prepared for the peak of it, a company should generate this keyword and its content already six months in advance. Google needs some time to index the website and consider its content as relevant. 

The Google Keyword planner is a tool for gathering ideas concerning the right keywords for a website or AdGroups and it works best in combination with GoogleAdwords. The planner gives forecasts and statistics about estimated clicks and conversion rates on keywords. This information provides an idea of keyword performance which helps estimate the bid and budget for a campaign. Furthermore, it is possible to check which keywords competitors are using. This can be very helpful in the competition for new customers. If a company manages to find keywords which match to the content very well, the cost per clicks will be lower because the quality score in the Google ranking increases. Even though the keyword planner inspires and gives insights into keyword analytics, the campaign is dependent on more than important words. To be more precise; the website has to be user-friendly. 

Google offers "Google Test my site", a free of charge tool that examines the website for its usability. Furthermore, it suggests measures for improvements. If a website is slow in loading, Google Test my site gives recommendations on how to speed up the site or adjust it to mobile standards. As a consequence, using these tools for SEO the website stays interesting and modern so that Google will scrawl the site and give it a better quality score.

More analytic tools

Besides Google, Alexa.com is provided by amazon and displays how a site is doing compared with its competitors. If internationally, or in a specific region, Alexa can access metrics locally and globally and can therefore give precise information. The software offers a seven day trial to allow users time to become familiar with its uses. Of very good use are free papers and studies by Searchmetrics. They specialize in search- and content marketing and offer analysis, recommendations and prognoses for different markets. A disadvantage of searchmetrics is its cost. About 1000.- Swiss Francs a month have to be taken into account. (Searchmetrics, 2017)

The use of Facebook ads has not yet been a major success, even though the targeting with Facebook is exceptional. Facebook provides statistics and facts about posts, visits, reach and likes. In order to coordinate marketing measures, the Facebook Business Manager is a costless platform to manage ads on Facebook sites or Instagram accounts.   Last but not least, a platform that helps by the starting point of an online project is the website Sistrix. After typing in the URL, the sites checks it and shows how the website is performing.  

Besides optimization and analytics, there is another important topic for online marketing: Review Management. Trustyou is one of the tools for reviewing management and will further be explained in another lesson and another blog entry.

Overall conclusion

Not only for technological reasons, but for the change in customer behaviour, doing online marketing is a steady process as shown in Figure 1 below. Companies have to continuously analyse their websites and campaigns. With these results, they can continuously optimise their strategies. What has been changed must be measured again to determine its success. These outcomes have to be stated and regularly re-analysed.

Figure 1: Web Analytics Cycle (Häberlin, 2017)

Sina & Andreas

References:

Admeira (2016). Media Facts 2017. Retrieved from:

http://admeira.ch/news-studien/mediafacts/digital

Facebook Business (2017). Infos zum Business Manager. Retrieved from:

https://de-de.facebook.com/business/help/113163272211510

Häberlin, S. (2017). Analytics and Interpretation. Lecture

Rinnhofer (2014). Markt- und Mediaforschung – Google Analytics. Retrieved from:

https://fhstpmedien.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/google-analytics/

Searchmetrics (2017). Unternehmensinformationen. Retrieved from:

https://www.searchmetrics.com/de/ueber-uns/

SEO Küche (unknown). Was sind die Google Webmaster Tools. Retrieved from:

https://www.seo-kueche.de/lexikon/google-webmaster-tools/

Van Wijk (2017). Meilenstein 2017: Hälfte der Weltbevölkerung online. Retrieved from:

http://politik-digital.de/news/meilenstein-2017-haelfte-der-weltbevoelkerung-online-2-151132/

Illustration: 

Figure 1: Web Analytics cycle (Häberlin, 2017)