Imagine cutting your online marketing budget while increasing your sales, knowing the exact degree to which calls to action on your website are working, or even accurately predicting what your customers are going to want months before they know it themselves. If your business is using analytics, chances are you're already reaping some of these benefits, along with many others.
There was a time when marketing was very costly.
"Businesses used to say, 'Fifty per cent of my marketing works, I just don't know which 50.' They just knew that they had to do 10 different things as part of the marketing mix and all those efforts [together] would pay off," said Flavio Marquez, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Snaptech Marketing. His website design and Internet marketing company helps businesses access the benefits of analytics to get results from all of their online marketing budget, not just 50% of it.
"Analytics provide a good sense of the mind of the consumer and how they browse, what are they thinking and why are they viewing specific pages, so you can optimize your website or your campaign accordingly," said Syed Hussaini, director of demand generation at BuildDirect, whose website receives more than one million visitors a month.
Most analytics are now done through script-based collection where a small amount of code is added to the webpage. The script tracks visitors' actions on a website and then aggregates them to provide feedback and useful data on trends. The Internet has a variety of free analytics software available for businesses to download, but the one that the experts recommend is Google Analytics.
The amount of information available from Google Analytics is vast. For example, the analytics it creates can indicate how well a webpage is optimized to make it search-engine-friendly by showing how much free traffic is arriving at the site and what search terms were used to get there. It can also be linked to a Google Adwords account to give detailed information on pay per click (PPC) data at the keyword level.
Keywords or terms that aren't returning more money than they cost can be eliminated to increase the efficiency of an online marketing budget. Google Analytics can also tell what page visitors land on, how long they stay at the site and what pages they view. A business can then adjust individual webpages to enhance visitors' experience as they move through the site.
And soon, Google Universal Analytics (currently in beta testing) will allow users to monitor customer activity across various platforms and will integrate online and offline data to create a holistic view of a website's contribution to both online and offline sales.
But it's with the use of predictive analytics that businesses really see results.
"Predictive modelling, which is our bread and butter, means using what has happened in the past to predict what will happen in the future," said Alex Soria, director of advanced analytics and business intelligence at Coastal Contacts, who uses his own predictive analytics software.
And it's working; the leading online vision care retailer was recently ranked number 3 in social media by Internet Retailer magazine and surpassed $1 billion in cumulative sales (since 2000) last September. But it's not just about sales.
"At the end of the day, we're a business. We're trying to increase revenue, but we're also trying to provide the best solution possible for our customers when they come to our site and that's all possible through analytics," said Soria.
BuildDirect is also benefiting from predictive analytics. Dan Brodie, vice-president of information technology and data analytics, explains that by applying proprietary algorithms to data from its website, the online building materials retailer can anticipate customer needs.
"We're able to work with the manufacturer to let them know what products they should be manufacturing and which of our warehouses they should be putting those products into. We have a very high degree of accuracy in terms of ensuring they're manufacturing the right products that will sell in certain areas."
Online marketing generates quantifiable results.
"You need to track how many people have gone to your website, contacted you or filled out a form [and other data] like that," said Marquez. "It's possible to quantify whether an online campaign is working or not.
"Through analytics and tracking mechanisms you can get all that information," said Marquz, adding that not gathering or following up on the information available is an opportunity few businesses can afford to miss.
Tips for getting the most out of analytics
1. Set goals
Know what you want to measure and have specific benchmarks in place. Goals can be set for lead generation, revenue transactions, return on ad spend, new account creation, etc.
2. Set filters
Exclude your own Internet protocol, as well as developers, designer or anyone working on the website for cleaner data. Create a separate analytics profile for any sub-domains such as blogs. This way, the higher engagement or lower transactions of blog visitors won't skew the main e-commerce site if it receives pay per click (PPC) traffic.
3. Check in
Customize your dashboard, so that a quick glance gives you all of the important information you need, saving you time. Set up daily or weekly email summaries from your analytics software so you're doing regular reviews.
4. Reduce the bounce rate
Find out what page visitors are bouncing from (exiting) your site. Use a site overlay or heatmap to identify problem areas. Optimize those pages to better engage with your customers.
5. Check site speed regularly
This metric is easy to overlook, but it's incredibly important. A slow-loading website will often lead to site abandonment and a low conversion rate.
