This post was originally written by Jim Davoren, Senior Analyst, Data Products, at Apartments.com
When asked to contribute to the blog on the topic of data, web analytics and other hip, rad math stuff, I grew excited. The scholar (nerd) in me declared, Finally, a medium to engage our wonderful blog readers with insights into all things data. The average guy from the Northside of Chicago said, Make. Data. Cool? Yes, I shall make data cool. Can it be done? I mean a blog contributor that writes about analytics and numbers, what could be more exciting, right? Rest assured, before I have myself a prolonged, 10 minute, nostalgic moment about all the joys numbers bring me, I’ll instead use this first post to introduce web analytics. I’ll save strange math and numbers for another day.
So what is web analytics?
Arthur Nielsen, former CEO of the Nielsen Company and early pioneer of contemporary marketing research, has been quoted as saying: The price of light is less than the cost of darkness. The decision-making world would be very dark without data. Web analytics provides the insight necessary to make sound, actionable decisions through the collection and analysis of user data.
There are quite a few tools out there that can be utilized today to track and analyze user traffic hitting a website (Google Analytics is often a common example). Generally, this kind of software is able to tell who is entering the website and record interactions across pages and page content. Some of these tools require a basic code implementation on the website and then use cookies as a way to track users. But Jim, you may ask, why are we bringing delicious baked goods into this? We aren’t, unfortunately, and for that my apologies. This kind of cookie acts as a digital fingerprint. Analytics tools are able to use these kinds of cookies (alongside some additional bells and whistles) to track common metrics, such as website visits and visitors. From here, additional data points are able to be collected and analyzed to shed even more light on user behavior as your visitors move through the website and interact from page to page. It is identifying and analyzing trends in the data that leads to actionable, data-driven decisions, such as redesigning a landing page based on your users’ interactions with its links, forms or buttons.
Any questions? Want to learn more about anything analytics related? If so, tell me in the comments section below.
