Web Analytics – Figuring Out What Consumers Want Without Asking Them

Web analytics isn’t necessarily a new field, but recently has begun to grow in popularity. It is essentially the process of collecting data on users who visit your website and this information is then used by the owners of the site to improve functionality and to decipher trends that users of the site may be involved with. The information collected usually includes such data as how users found your site, when they visited, what pages they looked at, and what they bought or downloaded.

It’s one thing to collect user data using web analytics software, but what do you do with it once you have it? There are a few steps which should be taken once the data has been collected. First, the data should be turned into a less tedious format and one that can be changed and manipulated easily. Many web analytic tools do this automatically which can save the user a lot of time. The next step is to analyze the collected data which can, for example, help in the identifying of consistencies between users visiting the site. This can lead to discovering what are the peak times for traffic visiting the site, what pages are the most popular, what is the average length of time users stay on the site/particular page, and do users come from search engines or direct linking. Once the data has been analyzed, website owners and marketers can then begin to think about how to improve their websites based on the data collected. This could be, for example, improving layout, design, or ease of use etc.

Web analytics has become much more popular recently since companies and marketers are spending more and more money on websites; while there is a lot of money to be made online, it is no longer possible to make easy money like in the past. This is according to Avinash Kaushik, who is a leading expert on Web analytics, and describes how there is simply more online these days. This means there is more people, more competition, and more search engines etc. and it is becoming very important to have access to data pertaining to your website.

While Web analytics is important now, it can only continue to increase in importance as owners of websites and marketers try and squeeze even more out of their online investments while at the same time keep and maintain a healthy customer base.

Permission Marketing – Giving the Consumer a Choice

Permission marketing essentially means that advertisers only deliver advertisements to a consumer which they are interested in seeing or reading about which is a significant change from what advertising used to be like. In the past, companies would spend millions on advertising campaigns, which could include television ads, billboards, and radio commercials. However, the problem with this kind of advertising is the fact that consumers will be watching and hearing your ads, whether they want to or not and makes it much more likely that they will simply ignore them. As clutter has increased, so has the likelihood of consumers purposely ignoring an advertisements message.

Permission marketing gives the consumer the power of what kind of advertisements they are going to read and watch from a corporation, as well as giving them the power to stop receiving the ads at any time. An example of this is opt-in email which gives the consumer the option of providing their email address to a business or advertiser, in exchange for advertisements that the consumer will find relevant or interesting.

A term that ties in to permission marketing is relationship building, which essentially means giving a company a human touch/face rather than appearing to be a faceless corporation. A prime example of a company who has done tremendously well with permission marketing and relationship building is Google. Seth Godin, who is a world renowned marketer, recently spoke at Google about how well they have built relationships with consumers, which in turn has built up their brand. Seth’s presentation highlighted this by giving examples of Google’s search engine and Yahoo’s search engine from ten years ago. Yahoo’s search engine page was filled to the brim was advertisements, while Google’s contained only their logo and the area for typing in search requests. Google focused more on simply providing a service to the consumer without submitting them to unwanted ads, which paid of for them in spades and has allowed Google to build one of the top brands worldwide, without investing in any unwanted consumer advertising. This generated positive word of mouth among consumers which were more than happy to tell others about Google’s services.

Google didn’t become more popular than Yahoo by having a better search engine; they both did the same task equally well. Google became more popular by relationship building and by not subjecting their potential users to advertisements until after they had inputted their search request. This allowed for the delivery of tailored advertisements to the consumer based on what they had inputted into the search engine. This greatly improved the odds of the consumer being interested in the advertisements and decreased the chance of any negativity being felt for being subjected to unwanted ads.

It’s clear that permission marketing along with relationship building is a positive step for businesses/advertisers and will undoubtedly become a key factor for success for all businesses in the near future.