Explore The Multiverse Of Web Analytics Tools

 

What Are Web Analytics Tools?

• Total users: A user is someone who has initiated a visit or "session" on your website within a specified time.

• New users: The number of first-time users who visit your website within a specified time.

• Sessions: The number of interactions initiated by all users on your website over a specified time. Since the same users may come back to your website more than once, this number is typically higher than the number of total users.

• Page views: The total number of pages viewed on your website within a specified time.

   

A Brief History Of Web Analytics Tools

 
In 1995, the first log-analyzer software was created, a tool called Analog, followed by a proliferation of tools known as "hit counters" in the late 90s. Hit counters were scripts installed on web page view to count the number of beans, er, visitors. Hit counters enabled even the most technologically challenged website owners to understand how much traffic their website received but that was about it.

JavaScript tags were introduced around the year 2000, with Google Analytics rising to prominence in 2005 as the most ubiquitous Web Analytics Tool. Tag-based tools don't just count your beans. They measure user behavior, traffic sources, top content and much more.
 

How Do Web Analytics Tools Work?

Code is the juice that powers the Web Analytics Tools. Specifically, website owners must add a JavaScript tag to every page of their website so that the analytics software can track user activity.

The tag makes it possible for the analytics software to count all the beans in your virtual jar (and by "beans" we mean people).
 
Each time a visitor lands on a tagged page of your site, another bean is added to the jar. The tag also collects other data. For example, the geographic location of your beans, where they came from and what device and browser they used to access your site.

Web analytics tools also use HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) cookies to help website owners measure certain metrics. These Cookies are packets of data that are stored locally on your device until deleted. Cookies are used by analytics tools to measure user interactions, distinguish unique users, track unique visitors and more.

Cookies, like beans, are also delicious! However, not everyone would agree to that. Respecting individual's discretion in whether or not to share their data with websites, there are regulations monitoring Cookies.

New privacy laws such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) have made it much easier for users to disable cookies when visiting a website for the first time. You’ve probably seen a banner like this appear when you visit a website:


Disabling cookies can affect the accuracy of Web Analytics Tools but it's now the law in many places to alert users to the use of cookies and get their consent.

Just as we have various kinds of jellybeans, there are a few types of Web Analytics Tools as well.

Types Of Web Analytics Tools

There are several types of Web Analytics Tools available to businesses that want to understand web traffic patterns, campaign performance and more. Here is a list of examples, using specific tools to help illustrate the types of plausible analytics being tracked.
 

• Website Traffic Analytics Tools

  Web traffic analytics tools measure visitor traffic and usage patterns. These are your basic bean counters or, at least, they measure the basics. They also provide more detailed information about a variety of metrics including behavioral information, site content trends and campaign performance.
  
  Examples: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Kissmetrics

• Campaign Analytics Tools

  Campaign analytics tools enable marketers to track the performance of marketing efforts and campaigns. This includes both paid and organic campaigns. Most social media platforms like Facebook have campaign analytics baked into their user interfaces and there are also third-party tools like Sprout Social that track social engagement and campaign performance across multiple platforms.
  
  Examples: Google Analytics, Sprout Social, Facebook Analytics

• Dashboard Analytics Tools

  Dashboard Analytics Tools integrate with tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, Twitter and others to create a visual dashboard of campaign and website performance. These tools are great for marketers because they don't require any real data science or programming knowledge. They basically take your data and make it look pretty (if line charts and graphs are your jam).
  
  Examples: Cyfe, Google Data Studio

• Search Engine Optimization Analytics Tools

  We're sorry to bombard you with even more tools but we'd remiss if we didn't mention SEO analytics tools like SEMrush and Yext. These tools help you track your keyword rankings on search engines, monitor competitor activity and troubleshoot indexing problems that may cause your website to rank poorly, or not at all, in Google. SEO analytics tools can also help you find and monitor backlinks to your website.
  
  Examples: SEMrush, Yext, Google Search Console

 

Why Do We Need Web Analytics Tools?

It'd be difficult, time consuming and frustrating to accurately count your beans without Web Analytics Tools. Marketers and website owners need these tools to understand what's going on with their websites, campaigns and understand visitor analytics. These tools help make sense of all the data users constantly generate, so businesses can make better decisions about everything they do online (from website design and usability to which social network to run ads on).

Web Analytics Tools are rightfully the backbone of digital marketing. They've helped reshape the advertising industry by creating a level of transparency and attribution that didn't exist in the offline world. Without this level of actionable insight, we'd basically be throwing virtual spaghetti (or beans?) against the wall to see what sticks.

If we haven't convinced you of their worth by now, here are some key benefits of Web Analytics Tools:
 

• They help you understand your website visitors and traffic patterns.

• They help you create a better-informed digital marketing strategy.

• They enable better content creation by providing context around content popularity, page popularity and usage information.

Web Analytics Tools close the loop for businesses, helping them understand what's working (and what's not) on their websites.
 

The Future Of Web Analytics Tools = Business Intelligence

The biggest trend in web analytics technology is that it's no longer a separate entity from other business intelligence like the customer and transactional data but part of a wider picture. Data unification is the newest buzzword in the world of web analytics. With tools like Google's unified app and web analytics platform being developed to merge app and web data, businesses will have a more holistic view of the customer journey.

This push toward data unification is already underway, with many tech stacks including multiple data management and analysis tools that integrate with each other to form a more complete picture of an organization's prospects and customers. Tools like Adobe's Experience Platform combine first party, third party and transactional data into one persistent, unified customer database, creating audience segments that make it easy to deliver personalized content and customized user experiences.

Finally, Privacy Laws like GDPR and CCPA are changing how companies address data collection and impacting how browsers collect data. This will, in turn, impact the reliability of traditional Web Analytics Tools that use cookie-based data to deliver insights. One thing is certain. While the bean counter, as we once knew it, may become extinct, the future of tracking beans (in the form of Web Analytics Tools) is bright. We’ve come a long way from the humble hit log files of the past.