If you are familiar with web site strategies or are a business-minded professional, you have probably heard about web analytics or web site statistics. So what exactly are web analytics and how can they help your digital marketing strategy? Web analytics are real-time reporting that allow you to gauge the effectiveness of your website.

Well, web analytics provide several cost-effective measures for increasing your web site return on investment, number of visitors and website monitoring. Web analytics definitely play an integral role in the development of any web-based online strategy for any company. Here are some of the features and benefits associated with web analytics.

Web analytics allows you to increase your online leads and sales. Here are three common features:

Increase Search Engine Traffic
With web analytics, you will be able to see where your customers are coming from. You will be able to determine what keywords the user typed in to find your website, to the actual search engine they browsed or how they came to your site through other websites. In addition, web analytics allows you can examine search engine visitor trends which will give you valuable feedback in the maintenance of your search engine strategies.

Promotion Tracking
Web analytics provides you a tool to increase the effectiveness of any online campaign. Whether it be banner ads, affiliates, promotions, email marketing etc, you will be able to determine the highest revenue stream through web analytics reporting.

Ecommerce Tracking
Another great feature of web analytics is that you will be able to produce real-time reports on ecommerce performance. The typical web analytics reports will tell you the number of orders, orders per customer and how much revenue your site is generating. Web analytics provide a very detailed report on your return on investment.

Web analytics allows you to track and analyze web site behaviour. Here are three common features:

Visitor Browsing Habits and Trends
Once a visitor lands on the website, it is important for you to track user behaviour. Web analytics will track navigation paths (i.e. how they click through your website). The reports will tell you which pages they looked at and in what order. Using these web analytics, you can drive traffic through your website and lead people to a call-to-action.

Increase Usability and User Satisfaction
Through web analytics, you will know exactly what visitors prefer in terms of content, images and information. By using these web analytics reports, you will be able to adjust your website according to these trends. This will increase your page views, customer retention and satisfaction. Web analytics is a tool used to continually improve your website.

Increase Conversion Rates
By eliminating bottlenecks within your online store checkout process, you will be able to increase online sales. Web analytics will improve your return on investment by detailing user behaviour through the ecommerce web site.

Web analytics allows you to monitor your website using a variety of online tools and formats. Here are three common features:

Online Reporting
Most web analytics systems provide you with usable administrative interfaces. You will be supplied with a login account to see real-team web site reporting and web analytics and web statistics. Some web analytics are even Flash-based.

Scheduling
Everyone knows that being busy is a fact of life. Web analytics programs make it easy for webmasters and maintenance teams by allowing scheduled reports. These can also be emailed to specified email accounts through the web analytics programs.

Exporting
All reports can be easily exported into a variety of formats including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF, HTML etc. Web analytics can be read in a variety of different programs.

In summary, web analytics and web statistics form a vital part in the digital marketing cycle. By not using web analytics, you are essentially driving without your eyes. Web analytics and web statistics will guide you through generating relevant leads and sales, customer retention and monitoring as well as easy reporting and scheduling. There are numerous of web analytics software on the market. Test drive them before committing to a single web analytics system for your website as the functionality, pricing and usability of each are different.

Web analytics will save you time and money in developing a solid digital marketing strategy for your website. Try web analytics today and you won’t be disappointed.