Web Analytic Tools Overview Report

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Introduction

The science of web analytics involves the collection of internet data, its scrutiny and further exposure in order to fully understand and optimize pages on the web. This is done in order to create better user experience for people surfing the web for information. Web analytic is wide but two primary categories of this science exist, offsite and on site analytics. When it comes to offsite analytics, analysis and reporting is open and is neither based as to whether you own nor maintain the site. Calculation is done on the basis on the potentiality of the web site to attract web surfers. A web site that is highly attractive is considered to have a better opportunity. The website is also judged against its ability to be visible through its creation of buzz around it. There are many websites that simply survive because of the buzz it creates within the realms of the online world.

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It has been shown by (Jellassy and Enders 2002) that Onsite analytics use calculations such as the frequency of new visitors to your site and conversion rates from the landing pages. This simply means that purchases done on the site are driven by which specific landing pages. Other variables measured when it comes to onsite analytics are, commercial context ability of the site and how this ability can be used in marketing. Generally the performance is measured against key performance indicators.

Different vendors have come up with tools that can do both offsite and on site web analytics. These products have been used by companies in order to rate the performance of their companies websites. The range of these products has increased overtime and the price has also reduced as the competition has increased. During the early days, companies used to rate the performance of their website solely by the number of hits that the site enjoyed. Another factor that used to drive up ratings was the number of pictures on the website. Soon the companies realized that pictures have a way of slowing down the download speed hence resulting in poor user experience. Visitors to the website ended more annoyed as they wasted their valuable time waiting for all the pictures to download. These days, companies are using data collected from the web metrics as a valuable source for business intelligence. Analytics tools are used to calculate the rate of returns on advertisement campaigns placed on websites. Statistics on the type of customers that normally visit their websites can also be collected and the company can use this data to come up better ways of utilizing their channels of communication. Companies can also identify impediments that visitors face when it comes to making crucial decisions such as buying of goods on the website.

Big Companies spend millions of dollars to get this information and service providers have been contracted in order to make use of this information and come up with better strategies that will eliminate the bottlenecks normally associated with making purchases over the web. It has been argued (Greenstein and Vasarhelyi 2005) that metrics collected could have information on the number and type of visitors that are within the different areas of the website. An example of this is how some visitors could be on the homepage while some could be on the contact pages. Click through rates are used to make changes if needed be as soon as percentages of visitors are collected. Web analytics is not only important for the big sized companies but is also important for any company with a web presence. For any company that markets goods and services on the net, it is important for them to have this information as it will be useless to spend money on advertising yet you cannot judge the resultant input.

Web analytics tools have different features that the companies use in order to use them. The variation in features is great as different companies have their own different uses and goals that they want attained from their E-commerce web site. A good web analytics tool should at least provide information on the number of persons that could be at a certain web page of a site, the origin of the visitors i.e. where they are coming from, their identity and what they could be doing once they have visited the site. These features are important. The tool should have features that can be used to analyze data such as: For our Company, (Ideal Solutions Ltd), we were searching for a tool that had the features below.

Features of a Good web Analytic Tool

  • Visitors: Each and every tool should be able to provide this metric. This feature on a tool is important as it provides information on the number of visitors on each web page of a particular web site. The number of visitors can provide valuable insight on the popularity of the company’s web site. Over a given period of time, the usefulness of each page can be calculated and changes can be done based on the number of visitors on each page.
  • Page Views: A good analytic tool should be able to come provide us with the number of times a page has been viewed. Normally this metric is divided into page views per visit which is normally the number of visits viewed by any visit on a web page during the course of over visit to the web site. When there is reported increase in page views it means that visitors have acquired interest on a certain web page. This could result in the visitors ignoring other pages on the site by jumping through hoops in order to get the information needed.
  • Unique Visitors: This refers to the number of different uses that could be visiting the site. This metric is different from the number of visitors from the site as it indicates the ability o the site or web pages to attract new interest in different persons. An example of unique visitors would be if three people visit the web site an average of three times you would have nine visits by three different visitors.
  • Most entered and exited pages: This metric refers to the pages that your visitors normally use to enter the website. In some of the sites this could be the homepage. This page could be different as a certain page could be more appealing to visitors thus it becomes the point of entry for any visitor. An analytic tool can also show which pages that the visitors normally use to get out of the site.
  • Key words: Analytic tools could highlight the most searched keywords in search engines that probably led visitors to our web sites. Example of these search engines could be Google, Bing or any other
  • Visitor’s data: Analytic tools may possess the ability to provide relevant information on the visitors of a certain web site. Key information could include the visitors’ country of origin, the web browser that they may be using and other information. This information can be used in making more intelligent business decisions.
  • Referrer sites: These tools can also have features that provide information on the sites that the visitors have been referred from. The external links that visitors use in order to reach your site can be an important metric as one can know who is talking about your sites or products. It is also important when calculating payment to other companies due to the publicity they have created for your site.
  • Conversion rates: This metric involves calculation of visitor processes from start to end. As a company you may want to direct the visitors on the web site to do a particular action. For example you may want your visitors to donate towards a particular cause, the process of your visitors clicking on the donate button to actual donation through means of payment is what can be calculated as a metric under conversion. It is rather a complex metric to calculate and most of it is done manually.
  • Tracking activities by registered users: The activities conducted by each and every registered user can be tracked from the time they logged in to your site to the time they exited. Good analytics tools can easily do this so as to provide a detailed analysis on the type of different visitors that may be registered to your site.
  • Click Tracks: A web analytic tool can analyze the path taken by each visitor through your website. Also known as click paths, this metric provides a graphical presentation such that when these tracks are plotted in a chart, one can get a rough idea on the popular web pages and which are not so popular. An example chart can show you that 30% of your visitors go foreword to go to the frequently asked questions pages.
  • Hits: The number of hits that a website enjoys is an important feature that each tool should be able to analyze. Although these days it is not that important, regardless, a tool should be able to evaluate the requests made of images and files on the web server for any given web page. This data is disregarded by most companies as it does not provide a rue picture or nature of events.

According to (Jellassy and Enders 2002) the above features are just the common features that may be found in an analytic tool. There are more advanced features that one can find in an analytic tool, these features may be customized according to the needs of the organization in question. Deeper analysis can be conducted by hiring consultant firms that have the specialized in web analysis.

Key Justifications

When choosing the analytic tool best for our company we have to choose a tool that is optimal or the organization both in terms of functionality and price. Most tools that are in the market are similar hence features offered cannot be differentiated as also the solutions could be read only. This means that no modifications can be done on them yet they may require a lot in terms of license fee. The web analytic tools that we may use are customized for the needs of the organization and are tailored to suit the organization. Before choosing a tool to be used by your organization, there are factors that you need to take into considerations before actual purchase, these factors are:

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  1. Ease of Implementation: This means whether the solution can easily be executed in the shortest period available.
  2. Ease of use: This regards to how comfortable the staff in your organization find it in using the analytics tool. A good analytics tool should be easy and reports should be easy to compile and report.
  3. Cost: The cost of the tool should also guide the company when choosing between the different tools that are available. There will be no point in choosing a tool that is very expensive yet has very little capabilities. Another factor that is within costs is the price of licenses, the cost of yearly licenses also varies and should also be considered as the number of computers to be installed also matters when it comes to licenses.
  4. Tool’s structural technology: the structural ability of the tool should be considered should not lead to a degradation of its capabilities. It has normally been found out that the more complex the structural element, the more vulnerable the tool can fail to be maximized to its full potential.
  5. Problem solving ability: The ability of the tool to solve particular issues on each website is the key to choosing a good tool. This factor ensures that the tool can go through the wide variety of information or the gross amount of data and come up with a clean presentation that is easy to understand.

Through our research on the different analytics tools, we found out that we needed a tool that could optimize and lead to maximization of our campaign ads. By this we mean that we needed a tool that could pull down information from the search engines and other websites where we have placed ads about our products and show us in clear and detailed reports about the success rates of our campaign. This was to be done on a regular basis such as each night. The set up of his functionality should be easy and should not include other third party software plug-ins provided by vendors. The information provided can be used to stop campaigns that are not generating revenue for the company. An argument placed by (Jellassy and Enders 2002) argues that this decision is based on the number of clicks, and conversion rates. The tool should be able to provide the information relevant for our company to analyze the number of transactions that resulted from the websites where the ads were placed.

For our organization, (Ideal Solutions Ltd), we needed a tool that could be able to segment the visitors that pass through our website. Segmentation is important as it enables one to look at the different categories of visitors on your website. For our company this is very important as we can easily see where our visitors are originating from, we can easily view our visitors from Africa and put them in a different category from visitors from Asia. Segmentation can also show the different language speakers who visit the site or which the landing page that specifically appeals to specific category of people. As a company that sells home appliances and other electronics over the net, (Ideal Solutions Ltd) sees this as a necessary functionality as w can also see which specific landing page that visitors use to enter our site. The tool should implement this functionality in a simple way.

Our organization (Ideal Solutions Ltd), being a big organization, we normally find ourselves with loads of data to evaluate; the analytic tool should be able to analyze not only the data collected but also old data. This data my have been collected before the tool was fully implemented. The tool should have the ability to do this with ease.

While researching for suitable tools for our organization, we had to address the dilemma that was facing us as we could not predict or know the flow of traffic through our site. We needed a tool that could illustrate paths taken by our visitors while surfing through our site. Also the way our visitors entered our site and exited was to be shown in a clear manner through graphical presentations such as charts and graphs. The general information that this would provide is the user experience that our visitors had while surfing through our site. A good web analytics tool should be able to trace the steps taken by the visitor from the landing page to the actual conversion. As a company we can know the stage at which we lose our prospective customers and hence calculate the leakage rate through the site.

Another justification for a need for a good web analytic tool is that we need a set of functionality that can enable us to improve on our SEO optimization. During our research we highlighted the need for visibility in terms of ranking in the different search engines available. Key words that direct traffic to ones site can be identified and used more often.

The performance of the tool was also under consideration when choosing the too as we had to choose a tool that was powerful when tested with real time data. We needed a tool that could give us a positive return on investment. The tool should be able to come up with a comprehensive report stressing all the metrics that have been mentioned above at a fast rate and in a clear presentation.

Finally we had to consider on the cost of the of each and every tool that is available in the market and choose one that catered on our need and was cost effective at the same time. Our findings showed that the price of the tools ranged from free to thousands o dollars. As of the free versions, we noticed that they were limited in terms of functionality but there were also some free software that proved to be quite versatile. There were also some tools that were affordable but required a lot of money when it came to license fees.

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Comparative study on Commercial analytic tools available

For this study we took four web analytic tools that are quite popular in the market and compared them against each other. These web analytic tools are Google analytics,Awststats, ShinyStat, and Site Meter. (Greenstein and Vasarhelyi 2005) argues that:

  • Google analytics: Google analytics is known for its use of standard metrics such as page views, click paths and other metrics that have been mentioned above. It also had ability to highlight metrics such as bounce rates and the amount of time spent by visitors on the site. Our research showed that the tool was very easy to use and its implementation was relatively fast when considered with other tools in the market. Tracking of metrics began as soon as we pasted a code from the tool to the website. Google analytics enables the use of a dashboard where information can be customized and emailed to other interested persons. Organizations using Google analytics could also integrate the tool with Google ad words hence enabling one to use ad words that are profitable and can drive traffic towards their site. Google analytics combines the power of its search engine Google to verify the behavior of visitors in your site in terms of how they search for things within the site. Finally the tool enables one to identify the revenue streams that the organization may be benefiting from. These sources can be identified from the click ad campaigns placed through the website and key words. The best news about this tool is that it is offered free and is easy to implement and to use.
  • Awstats: This web analytic tool is offered through a number of web hosting companies. Its features include the ability to check for referral sites and indicate how much of traffic is being directed to your site from them. It is a good tool when a person wants to know if any hot links are being directed to your site. The tool offers ways in which to catch persons trying to steal bandwidth from the site as reports are generated and traffic is clearly shown. Apart from these two features, other metrics being offered by other competing tools are also offered by Awstats.
  • ShinyStat: This tool is offered s software packages for users that are categorized as individual users. Its features include the ability to track the impact of marketing and the results of ad campaigns. The tool is able to monitor the return on investments. For enterprises the web analytics tool is offered through web hosting under a level service agreement with ISPs.
  • Site Meter: This web analytic tool is offered as a freeware for individual and site owners who have less than 100,000 visitors each month. Above this number, the tool is offered at a charge for bigger web sites. Persons or companies using this tool can benefit from analytics on tracking of visitors time on the website and other basic metric calculations such as tracking referrals.

Company Choice after Cost/Benefit Analysis

Currently our organization (Ideal Solutions Ltd), has conducted various studies on the type of analytic tool that will be able to satisfy the needs of the organization. The research group came up chose Google analytics as the preferred tool to be used. The choice was made due its ability to provide all the metrics that were needed in our organization and better yet the solution came at the cheapest price when compared to rival analytic tools and this price was free. When it came to implementation, Google analytics was found to be very easy to implement and to use as all that was needed. When a cost/benefit estimate was conducted the analytic tool was able to beat competitors due to its ability to use its search engine as means of both tracking and directing traffic towards your site.

Google analytics Is also backward compatible meaning that the tool can also work on previous data that were collected even before the tool was designed this also means that the tool can work for a longer time span and in case of any changes within the software, we may not need to make a full evaluation and purchase again as Google will be able to come up with patches and upgrades for the new release. The tool can be used for longer period given also its ease in the ability to use.

References

Greenstein, M & Vasarhelyi, M, 2002, Electronic Commerce: Security, Risk Management and control, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill.

Jelassy, T & Enders A 2005, Strategies for E-business: Creating value through Electronic and mobile Commerce, Prentice Hall.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Web Analytic Tools Overview." December 1, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/web-analytic-tools-overview/.

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