Data on who is using your website or web application and how they are interacting with it is gathered by web analytics tools. Understanding and enhancing the user experience (UX) is made possible by these data.
Early web analytics systems, such as Google Analytics and Kissmetrics, were primarily concerned with gathering quantitative data, such as pageviews, sessions, and traffic sources, and displaying it in dashboards and reports.
These days, you can analyze your traffic using these conventional quantitative statistics as a starting point. They have a significant drawback, though, in that they are unable to explain user behavior, which makes it challenging to enhance the user experience.
Quantitative data, for instance, can reveal which steps in your checkout process result in the highest number of drop-offs. However, qualitative data—the subjective insights about what people want or why they behave the way they do—is usually required to understand why.
This data is not gathered by conventional quantitative analytics methods. Because of this, it may take months of brainstorming and A/B testing to identify and address the issues that impact your UX and conversions.
Because of this, the realm of web analytics tools has expanded to encompass visual user insights tools like Smartlook and Hotjar as well as behavior analytics.
By gathering both quantitative and qualitative data, these new analytics tools enable you to see beyond the numbers and gain a deeper understanding of user behavior. You may solve errors, increase conversion rates, enhance user experience, and much more with the help of the insights they offer.
Examine the top web analytical tools listed below and be sure to utilize them to enhance your online visibility. You can utilize a variety of tools to assist you enhance your online presence, but some that you might want to think about are as follows:
1. Google Analytics
Given that Google is one of the most popular tech companies in the world, it should come as no surprise that it is also one of the most popular web analytics tools on the market. You can use Google Analytics to analyze where your website traffic is coming from, how your users are behaving, and what your bounce rates look like.
Furthermore, you can calculate your conversion rates and figure out how much time people spend on your website. It has become one of the most popular tools because Google remains one of the most popular search engines. Therefore, you can take advantage of information from Google itself and use it to maximize the results of your digital marketing campaign. The best part is that you can access these tools for free.
2. Mailchimp Reporting and Analytics
Even though a lot of people associate Mailchimp with email marketing, it has become an all-in-one marketing tool that you can use to optimize your online presence. For example, you might be interested in the digital marketing analytics and reporting tool available from Mailchimp. You can use this tool to make informed business decisions, gather a wide variety of insights, and make decisions regarding your digital marketing campaign.
For example, you may want to figure out how your landing pages are doing, automate your email campaign, and collect ad reports to make sure your campaigns are behaving as they should. You can use this tool to figure out what is working well, what you might need to change, and what you want to cancel. That way, you can maximize the return on every marketing dollar that you spend.
3. Baidu Analytics
Another tool you may want to consider is called Baidu. If you have any overseas traffic, you need to take advantage of this option. It is run by the Chinese search engine Baidu, and you can use this tool to monitor where your traffic is coming from, what your conversion rates are, and how you can maximize your performance metrics. You can also look at data regarding organic search keywords from Baidu’s search engine. The best part is that this tool is free to use.
4. Yandex Metrica
Another tool you may want to use for monitoring overseas traffic is called Yandex Metrica, a tool provided by the Russian search engine Yandex. You can use this to monitor the behavior of your users and optimize your website traffic. You get access to unsampled data, even when you have a lot of traffic, and you can use advanced tools to replay sessions, see where people are clicking, and get the most out of your website.
5. Adobe Analytics
If you are familiar with other Adobe tools, then this one will probably feel familiar to you. It is an advanced multi-channel data collection tool that you can use to learn as much information as you want about your visitors. Even though you do need to reach out to Adobe for a price quote, it is one of the most comprehensive tools available. You can monitor information about voice searches, web searches, IoT products, and more. Then, you get access to Predictive Analytics that will help you position your website to maximize your online presence.
6. Amplitude
If you are looking for a way to learn more about product intelligence, you need to take advantage of the Amplitude tool. This is a tool that provides you with 10 million actions for free every month. You can use it to track your product usage, how your users are interacting with your products, and your funnel conversion rates. This is an exceptional tool you can use to monitor the experience of your users, and you can profile user data to figure out how you can customize your website to meet the needs of your visitors.
7. Matomo
If you are looking for an open source tool, you should consider Matomo. This is a great tool that you can use to monitor your website traffic, measure how many visitors you are getting, and figure out how your users are behaving when they access your website. If you host your own website, you can use this tool for free. It will provide you with access to a wide variety of metrics that you can use to optimize your online presence and improve the experience of your users.
8. Hotjar
Another tool you may want to take advantage of is called Hotjar. This has become a popular tool because it provides you with access to something called the heat map. A heat map shows how people are behaving when they access your website, what they click on, where they spend their time, and how they interact with your various widgets.
If you want to figure out what is working well on your website, then you should put this tool to work for you. Then, you can figure out why people like that portion of the website, replicate it elsewhere, and get the most out of your online presence. You may want to use Hotjar to help you improve the quality of your website.
9. Statcounter
You may also want to take advantage of a tool called Statcounter, which is one of the best options for web traffic analytics. You can use this tool to monitor how many views your pages are getting, how people are spending their time when they visit your website, and where your traffic comes from. You do get access to several hundred free page views, so you can use these views to figure out whether you want to incorporate this tool into your digital marketing campaign.
10. MonsterInsights
You may also want to use a tool called MonsterInsights. Many people like this tool because it is one of the easiest options to learn. If you are looking for something that has a relatively short learning curve, this could be the best option to choose. You can use this tool to collect a lot of information about your users. Then, you can profile them individually, figuring out how they interact with your website. Based on how people use your website, you can improve the quality of your digital marketing campaign and stay one step ahead of the competition. If you are looking for a tool that works quickly, this might be the right option for you.
11. Mixpanel
One of the most popular new tools available is called Mixpanel. This is a tool that provides you with access to a comprehensive business analytics and advanced product platform. You can use this to track the behavior of your customers, monitor key performance indicators across multiple websites, and customize your online presence to meet your needs. It has been specifically designed to help those who operate in the SaaS field and need access to real-time data about how their users are interacting with a product they may have released.
The Most Important Web Analytics Metrics
While there will be custom data points for certain business types, most companies can benefit from tracking the most popular web analytics metrics listed below.
Visitor Data
Visitor Data refers to information collected about the people engaging with your website or web app. Core data points collected about an audience include these:
- Individual User Information – name, email, company, etc.
- Account Information – prospect, leads, paying customer, plan types, etc.
- Demographics – gender, income, career, education level, etc.
- Location– country, region, state, city
- Custom Usage Metrics – total payments made, items purchased, downloads/uploads, most used features, etc.
In Woopra, collecting data about these metrics will help you put together an Ideal Individual User Profile. With this data, you can make informed decisions when it comes to your marketing efforts and advertising campaigns.
Read Also: Web Resources for Email Marketing
This is particularly important when it comes to spending money on advertising because you’ll want to scale up in the areas that you know work best for you.
For example, if your Ideal User segment is males between the ages of 35 and 55, who live in a major city and have a career as a software engineer, you’ll want to place your ads in front of people who meet that same criterion.
During the sales cycle or trial period, with custom usage metrics, you could also see which aspect of your product a particular segment of customers is using the most—further enhancing your marketing focus.
Visitor Behavior
Visitor Behavior refers to the actions a particular user or cohort of users displays during the customer journey. These are some of the core metrics to review:
- Feature Usage – interactions with your product or service.
- Visit Length– the duration of time a visitor or cohort of visitors spend engaging with your web property before leaving.
- Pages Views– the number of times each separate page on your site (or within your app) is viewed.
- Referrer Data– information on how your visitors came to your site such as direct traffic, search, ppc, marketing campaigns, etc.
Understanding Audience Behavior metrics is important because getting the right people to your web property and keeping them there long enough to have a good user experience is important for the overall health of your business.
Conversion Rate & Event Tracking
The Event Tracking and Conversion Rate metrics go hand-in-hand because you will likely track the conversion rate of the people completing key events on your web property.
- Event Tracking – Measures how many people complete a specific on-page action such as clicking certain links, completing purchases, downloading key items, submitting forms, playing videos, and other user events that you want to track.
- Conversion Rate – Calculates the percentage of people who complete a specific, important event such as submitting a form, starting a free trial, making a purchase, etc.
The events you track should relate to your specific conversion events and key product features. While it’s certainly possible to track every event on your site, it’s often more beneficial to reduce the noise and focus on specific actions that meet your analytic goals.
For example, if you’re focusing on site registrations, tracking every single click on your site could be excessive. Instead, you could simply track how many people click the “Sign Up for Free Trial” link. From there you would likely calculate the conversion rate of how many people who click the link go on to sign up for the free trial.
Similarly, you might track how high value customers are interacting with your products in relation to low value customers. In this case, tracking the use of key product features would be more important than tracking blog posts.
When in doubt on what to track, you could see if your analytics tool of choice can help in this area. For example, Woopra’s onboarding support can provide an in-depth outline of what exactly to track to reach your analytic goals.
Individual Customer Journey Tracking
Often, web analytics marketers will look at aggregate data or all of the website visitors/users to see how groups of people or segments are behaving on the web property. This is important because you likely have hundreds or thousands of people visiting your web property each day, and you want to make sure it’s optimized for your users.
However, data on individual users can be extremely useful. This is helpful when trying to close a deal, upsell a contract, or make sure that new customers are having a smooth onboarding experience.
Most web analytics platforms are unable to provide individual-level analysis such as Google Analytics. However, Woopra is designed to give both aggregate and individual data.
Using Woopra, you can see who is:
- Making payments
- Interacting with your website
- Opening emails
- and using key product features
If your sales team is looking for data on real people, individual customer journey analytics tracking through Woopra is the solution you need.
Funnel Analysis
One way to know which key events are important is to map data to the different stages of your marketing funnel.
Here are some things you can track for each phase:
Awareness Phase
- Number of visitors
- Product interest
- Percentage of unique visitors
- Visit length and scroll depth
- The source visitors come from
- Clicks to social media channels
Consideration Phase
- Conversion rate for email opt-ins
- Conversion rate for downloads
- Number of visitors who click key links (e.g. Start Free Trial)
- Number of visitors who watch key videos (e.g. product demo videos)
- Number of visitors to key pages (e.g. pricing page)
- Engagement with key content
Conversion Phase
- Number of visitors who sign up, register, and complete a goal
- What people who convert do immediately after (e.g. do they immediately login?)
- What do people who don’t convert do next (e.g. do they leave the site or go to a different page?)
Tracking these key actions will give you insights into the journey of people who convert vs. those who don’t. With this information, you can make changes to your web property so you can get more people to convert.
Marketing Campaign KPIs
While tracking key actions that happen on your web property, it’s also important to track your digital marketing campaign KPIs or Key Performance Indicators that start off of your web property.
Advertising Campaigns
- Campaign tracking – number of people who click an ad to go to your site.
- Campaign Automation – add visitors to external marketing applications.
- Conversion rate – percentage of people who click an ad and convert on a goal.
- ROI – the total revenue generated by different campaigns.
Email Campaigns
- Open rate – number of people who open an email.
- Click-through rate – number of people who click on a link in an email.
- Unsubscribe rate – percentage of people who receive an email and unsubscribe.
- Conversion rate – percentage of people who click on a link in an email and convert on a goal.
Email Automation
- Trigger email campaigns based on visitor behaviors.
- Does the email open rate get worse (or stay steady) as more emails are sent?
- Are people converting into upselling and cross-sell opportunities while in automation?
- Are people unsubscribing after receiving a certain number of emails?
Remarketing
- Automation – remarket to specific visitors based on their behavior on your site.
- Click-through rate – how many people click on a remarketing ad.
- View-through conversion – how many people who see a remarketing ad then go on to convert (without clicking on the ad itself).
This list is not comprehensive! Depending on the type of marketing and advertising campaigns you’re running, you may track more (or less) than the metrics suggested here.