To get data about the users who visit your site, you need to install a web analytics counter. For example, Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica counters. So you will find out which pages users visit, how long they have been on each of them, where they clicked.
What you can learn about user behavior on the site using web analytics
Within web analytics systems, such data is presented in the form of reports:
- Attendance… Shows the total number of visits to the site and the number of unique visitors. There will be more visits, because one user can open the site several times.
- Time of visits… This is the average duration of visits to your site. The higher it is, the more popular the resource is.
- Depth of views… The number of pages the user visited during one visit to the site. For landing pages, this report may not be important, but for online stores, informational and corporate sites, the view depth indicator needs to be increased. The larger it is, the higher the chance that the audience will actively convert into leads and perform the targeted action.
- Bounce rate… Refusals show how much the user is interested in the site. If he opened one page, quickly flipped through it and closed it, it means that he did not find anything useful. The more bounces, the lower the organic rankings and the more expensive the CPC.
Counters can identify the device and browser of a site visitor. They show the approximate age, gender, interests of the user. The collected data is displayed in the personal account of Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica.
What is the difference between web analytics services
More often than not, both popular web analytics services – Analytics and Metrica – are used together to collect and analyze more data. The services are similar, but differ in some methods of collecting information. For example, counting bounces. Google Analytics records a rejection if the user has only opened one page on the site. Yandex.Metrica – if you spent less than 15 seconds on a website page.
Web analytics services also differ in a set of functions and tools. In Google Analytics, you can track visitor activity on the site almost live – with a delay of 15 seconds. Yandex.Metrica has a Webvisor that captures all the actions of a site visitor in a screencast format on a video. You can see the entire user session: which blocks of the page he lingered on, how he navigated the landing page, which screen he scrolled to, how quickly he filled out the form, and so on.
Yandex.Metrica has two useful maps – clicks and scrolling. The first one highlights the areas on the page where users most often clicked. The second shows which elements grabbed attention and which ones just scrolled. For example, you added a “Submit request” button in the middle of the landing page, and then you saw in Metric that users rarely clicked on it and often scrolled to the bottom of the page. Perhaps users could not quickly find the button – they did not notice it among the large amount of text. Exit – publish the button at the top and bottom of the page or highlight it visually.
Web analytics collects anonymized data, that is, without names, addresses, phone numbers. There is enough information about user behavior to compose a portrait of the target audience and determine a strategy for website optimization.
What end-to-end analytics can do and web analytics services can t
Web analytics will help you understand where to place buttons or an application form and which pages to modify on the site. But what about business metrics? Which advertising do you get more requests and sales from, and which one does not even lead to visits to the site and brings the company losses? These questions are answered by end-to-end analytics.
End-to-end analytics services, such as Roistat and others, combine several services in one window: they combine web analytics data with CRM data, call tracking, advertising sources – advertising campaign costs, the number of visits, requests and purchases, the number of calls.
Thus, you understand:
- what keywords bring visitors to the site;
- from which ad they go to the site;
- how much money each traffic source brought;
- how much you spent on lead acquisition.
End-to-end analytics helps you create and analyze your sales funnel and track your ad performance.
In end-to-end analytics, you can see a general report on all traffic sources and understand what is going wrong. The service will show you which keywords are driving non-targeted traffic and which channels were involved in attracting leads.
We use web analytics in conjunction with end-to-end analytics
Example: a company is engaged in the insulation of balconies. I created two promotional pages, received the first applications, and the sales started. From the data of web analytics, it can be seen that the first landing page brought 60 leads, and the second – 30. It seems logical that more money should be injected into the advertising of the first landing page, and the second one should be redone: look at the click and scroll maps, find strong and weak landing page blocks …
But before putting landing page tasks into work, you should study end-to-end analytics. Perhaps the decision to increase the advertising budget for the first landing page will no longer seem so effective.
With the help of end-to-end analytics, we will find out the entire path of leads from both landing pages. Out of 60 applications in the first case, the company received only 15 sales, and the second page gave 25 sales with 30 applications.
Leads | Sales | CR on sale | |
Landing page 1 | 60 | fifteen | 25% |
Landing page 2 | thirty | 25 | 83% |
The conversion to sales on the second landing page is much higher. The original plan disappears – you shouldn t redo the second landing page. You need to understand why applications from the first landing page convert worse. Users may have received a misconception about the product, so they did not make a purchase after placing the order. It is worth rewriting the text and offer on the first landing page and analyzing lead behavior.
Also, a combination of Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica and end-to-end analytics will give more data:
- To collect information about the audience… We get demographic data about users, see where they came from and who made a purchase. We segment the audience and create separate offers for each group, taking into account their interests.
- To optimize the site… We study page visits and see which keywords are driving traffic. Perhaps the pages do not accurately describe your proposal and the content should be revised.
- For a detailed study of user behavior… We look at the depth of view and the time people spent on each page of the site. We track from which pages visitors left the site most often, and which landing pages convert visits into requests and sales. We are trying to improve them, finalize the blocks in order to retain users.
Outcomes
- Web analytics collects data about the audience, user behavior on the site and helps to analyze traffic, viewing depth, site conversion.
- End-to-end analytics allows you to compose and analyze a sales funnel, find traffic channels from which you get more leads and sales.
- Using end-to-end and web analytics in conjunction will make it possible to track the user s path from clicking on an ad in the search results to the final profit, understand which keywords are driving traffic, and then optimize the structure of landing pages, texts and offers.
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