Web Analysis — How It Works And Where It’s Used

In this article, we will deal with the topic of web analysis or data tracking on the web. From my point of view, this is a really exciting topic that no one who is involved in performance marketing can avoid. We will deal with the following topics and questions:

• What do we need web analytics for anyway?
• How does web analysis work?
• Which areas of application are there?
• Advantages
• Disadvantages
• What do we need web analytics for anyway?

It is used, including tracking, so that we can measure our performance. Based on this, we can then derive recommendations for action. Subsequently, these recommendations are implemented and the process starts all over again. This means that we measure our changes again and observe whether our adjustment has brought an improvement or not. Without a corresponding data basis, such as is available in web analysis, such optimization would not be possible.

When it comes to the topic of web analysis, one quickly comes across tracking and analysis tools such as Google Analytics or Statcounter. These tools provide us with the possibility to better analyze our web traffic. Here we are at an important point: We do not analyze the web per se, but rather the traffic stream on our website. So we are talking about visitors. We can use this to track many user interactions. In principle, we are talking about analysis possibilities of session duration, visited pages, pages where the user left the website, the path the user took on the website (first page A, then B then C), and many more possibilities. These include demographic or socio-demographic analysis.

How does web analysis work?

I cannot and do not want to go into the exact technical workings of web analytics here. This would go beyond the scope of this article and is also not purposeful. Nevertheless, I would like to go into the basic functioning of web analysis or web tracking in a little more detail.

As we know by now, online tools like Google Analytics provide us with the possibility to perform tracking as well as analysis of our web traffic. However, such systems must first be integrated into our website. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call the website a website.

How does integration between Google Analytics and a website work?

• Sign up for Google Analytics

With a Gmail account, you can sign up for Google Analytics within a few minutes. Google Analytics is basically free of charge.

• Create a tracking property and get and embed tracking code

A tracking property is nothing else than the name of your website. For Google it is a property, for you, it is the tracking ID for your website. Even though this ID is a number, you can always think of it as the name of your website. Then Google Analytics will provide you with the tracking code.

What is the tracking code and what do I do with it?

The tracking code enables all the heavy lifting that happens in the background during web analytics. It is a code snippet of just a few lines and allows us to track our entire website — if we so choose. We need to embed this code into our website. How exactly this works and what you have to pay attention to, Google itself tells you. If you do not have the possibility to access the source code of your own website — either directly or via plugins, addons, or the like — a specialist can help you. The integration of Google Analytics is generally not rocket science and should be done within a few minutes.

As soon as we have integrated the tracking code properly and above all correctly, our tracking is already running from this moment and the web analysis would already be possible. Here it must be said that — depending on the actual traffic — you usually have to wait a few days until you have enough data. Because only with a correspondingly high amount of data can proper analyses, and recommendations for action based on them, be derived.

Which areas of application are there?

In principle, Google Analytics can be integrated into many types of content “web presences”. Here are some examples:

• Classic website
• forum
• blog
• SaaS product
• webshop
• Web apps of any kind
• …

With all these web presences we have traffic. That means visitors who use our blog, our forum, or our webshop. For all of them, it is important for us to get as much information as possible about our traffic.

But why do we want to get information about our traffic in the first place?

We already know that we need web analytics for ongoing optimization. At the end of the day, that’s always the overall goal as well. But web analytics also allows us to get certain traffic-specific information.

Example:

We launch our first own web store and in the course of planning, we have defined our target groups with personas. We decide to use web analytics for our webshop and after one month we have enough data. Now we could go and check if the users on the webshop match our personas at all. After we can see demographic data via web analytics, this comparison is possible within a few minutes/hours.

Advantage

The advantage is obvious: since we are in the realm of data-driven marketing with web analytics, we can continuously make optimizations. For websites, this allows us to get more leads and for webshops, more sales conversions.

Disadvantage

If you read through the possibilities of web analytics, you might assume at first glance that it only brings advantages. From my point of view there are really many advantages but one disadvantage, which might be none at all for one or the other:

• Legal circumstances

Admittedly, especially for website operators and the same in Europe, it is becoming increasingly difficult to track their traffic using analytics tools like Google Analytics. Of course, tracking is still possible, but legal decisions are creating more and more hurdles for us as webmasters. In part, some data is not tracked at all because it is not privacy compliant. Furthermore, nowadays nothing works at all without cookie consent. Great from the consumer’s point of view, suboptimal from the company’s point of view.

Final thoughts

To quote Peter Drucker,

“you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” — Peter Drucker

This quote should illustrate the importance of tracking. After all, if we don’t have a database to work from, we can never figure out optimizations and make recommendations for action based on them. We would simply be making assumptions all the time. But guessing is the wrong approach when you are in the world of performance marketing.

I believe that you put yourself at a distinct competitive disadvantage if you don’t do tracking. So to this day, I still don’t understand why some companies still do without tracking.

Disclaimer

This article/blog post and the information it contains are for informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial or legal advice or the like. Not all information is accurate/correct. Before making any major (financial/legal) decision, please consult a financial or legal professional.