hey let's go over how you can make web
analytics work for you no matter what
kind of business you own you learn about
how analytics helps you track and
measure what visitors do on your website
and use that information to help you
achieve your business goals let's get
started now used properly web analytics
can become the foundation of your online
portion of your business
that's because analytics can measure the
performance of just about any kind of
online marketing you decide to do from
search to display advertising social to
email and everything in between
at the same time analytics measures your
website visitors across the entire
digital customer journey from the first
time a person visits your website to
when they become a valuable repeat
customer to see how this all comes to
life let's imagine you're the owner of a
guest house or bed-and-breakfast one
online goal for your bed-and-breakfast
is to have visitors make a reservation
on your site after all that's how you
make money right analytics can help
measure how many reservations are being
made but it will also capture important
insights about the things that lead up
to and follow that reservation all
throughout the entire customer journey
so what exactly does that mean let's
play out an example of the journey the
customer goes through before they make
that reservation let's say they're
heading to Cologne Germany in three or
so months and they're looking for a
guest house the first thing they might
do is go online and search for a term
like guest houses in Cologne after their
search they end up on a search results
page here they might see lots of
different websites from guest houses
like yours they're in research mode once
they've found your website they might do
any number of things like check out your
daily rates maybe see what kind of rooms
you have available brass and reviews or
Eve
look for testimonials to get a better
idea of what your guest house is really
like they might even look at some
pictures to get a feel of the place at
this point they're probably not ready to
actually booked a reservation
they might add it to their shortlist and
continue looking around or they'll sign
up to receive email updates from you to
make sure they don't miss out on any
promotions perfect so two weeks later
you send out an email offering 10% of
the normal rate for the dates they're
planning to travel at this point they
probably have done quite a bit of
research but haven't booked anything yet
and that email was just what they needed
to make their decision so they clicked
on the email go back to your website and
make that reservation the power of
analytics is that it can help your
business measure what's going on at
every stage of the customer journey if
you want to know how people are
initially becoming aware of your
business it can tell you which search
engines people are finding you on and
which kinds of pages they're being sent
to it can also tell you if people are
actually engaging with your business
when they get to your website for
example do they browse around and sign
up for email updates or do they just
click the back button on their browsers
and move onto the next option analytics
can also measure whether people are
converting on the goals that you want to
track in our example there were actually
two first that email newsletter signup
and the second the reservation itself
analytics can tell you whether people
are coming back and becoming repeat
customers when properly set up analytics
can even tell you if those loyal
customers are becoming advocates for
example are they sharing your content
with others on social networks a great
way to turn analytics into a powerful
tool that helps you understand how
people use your website and improve
accordingly it's a set clear specific
quantifiable
goals at every stage of the customer
journey you can then measure your
progress towards those goals and
identify bottlenecks that are getting in
the way of achieving them for example
your guest house may have a goal of
getting at least 50 reservations per
month using analytics you might find out
that there are people getting confused
by your booking system which is causing
interested potential customers to
abandon your website and probably booked
somewhere else now this isn't good news
of course but it's great information it
shows you what needs to be fixed and
hopefully drives a decision to spend
some time and resources making your
booking process quicker and easier and
that's the key because data without
action isn't going to help anyone okay
so we've covered a lot of ground here so
let's recap analytics can become the
foundation that measures and supports
all of your digital efforts it can help
you measure what's happening and
understand the different stages of the
online customer journey highlighting
things that you're doing well and
showing where you need to improve so set
your goals measure your progress and
then use that data to take your business
to the next level