Web analytics

Web analytics is the collection, measurement, reporting and analysis of internet data for purposes of optimizing and the understanding of web usage.

Web analytics is often thought to be just measuring the organic website traffic but it is also a tool for business and market research. It can also help to measure the result of traditional print advertising campaigns by analysing how the traffic to a specific website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign.

We can divide web analytics in two things: off-site and on-site web analytics.

Off-site analytics

Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and analysis regardless of whether you own or maintain a website. It includes the measurement of a website’s potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole.

On-site analytics

On-site web analytics measure a visitor’s journey once on your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. On-site web analytics measures the performance of your website in a commercial context. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and used to improve a web site or marketing campaign’s audience response.