All too often when people hear web or digital analytics they assume they are the same thing. And while they both have a place in your reporting and analytics activities, they are very different and give you very different information. Here we’ll discuss what each set of data mean and why they’re important to you.
Google Data Studio template
Web Analytics is what most people traditionally think of when they think data from online activities. This data set includes site visits, bounce rates, and number of sessions. You will often source this data through your website host admin panel or Google Analytics. This information is helpful in that it gives you a very high level overview of what’s happening on your site. You can use this information to see how many people are currently visiting your site, what pages users are landing on when they search for you, and what channels are currently sending the majority of traffic your way. Where this data falls short is providing the how and why behind the data. How did people come to find you? Why did they decide to buy, signup, or download? That’s where Digital Analytics comes in.
Digital Marketing Analytics are the key to making informed decisions about your online activities as a business. These data points give you actionable information about the outreach and marketing initiatives being rolled out (i.e. social media, blog posts, advertisements, lead generators etc.) and how effective they are in achieving the goals you have set forth. When marketing analytics are set up properly you gain insights into not only your website performance but the performance of your social media campaigns, email sends, and even offline data collection methods. This allows for the measurement of not just your website but of your marketing as well, allowing you to track customers through the sales funnel and act on successful (or unsuccessful) initiatives.
But with all this data comes the issue of organization and aggregation. While you can track your email performance through your email provider, your social performance through each platform, and your event sign ups through your form provider, you miss out when these touch points are not linked. Experts say it takes a consumer an average of 7 interactions with your messaging before they decide to buy, so each of your outreach efforts is a valuable step in the consumer journey and is worth being tracked as a part of a holistic approach to data analysis. At the end of the day, the point of implementing these data collecting tactics is to be better able coax consumers down the marketing funnel in order to increase conversions.
The Tools:
Google Analytics has made great leaps in bridging the gap between web and digital marketing analytics and is a robust (and free) tool that can help any business as they begin to collect and analyze their data. Note that this will take some work on the back end of your site and likely someone familiar with the platform to really be able to extract all the useful data.
Hubspot has multiple features but their marketing analytics is a customer favorite. You are able to measure your entire marketing funnel in one place with built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards. And with a CRM integration this is a great tool for marketing and sales teams alike.
Another great option, with a simple user interface is Cyfe. It has separate dashboards showing insights for all of your platforms: social media, marketing, web analytics, finance, sales, project management, IT and startup with lead generation tracking. And the great news is more tools are being launched every day!
The point of this is simple – data means nothing if you have no context, no goals, and no way of acting on the results. Start with defining your goals and KPI’s then set your business up for success by implementing these analytics and unlocking this valuable information.
Remember, what gets measured, gets managed.