Analytics is Key!

For a long time now SEO's have religiously checked their analytics package/packages to see exactly how their sites are performing both in terms of traffic, conversions, bounces and usability. Over time this has become increasingly difficult as there is no single package that can measure everything, especially when it comes to tracking activity from mobile browsing and mobile apps.

So why do us SEO types rely so much on analytics - there really are too many reasons to list, but analytics really is the key to site performance, usability, conversions and tracking the performance of keywords. In many senses it is the metrics gained via analytics packages that determine what needs to be optimised on a given website. One of the best examples of this is that a site can rank in the top 3 positions for all it's target keywords, but this doesn't guarantee conversions, if the site is not user friendly then users will not convert, simple!

The solution - roll out the usability study using a package such as Crazy Egg or Clicktale, analyse the results, implement the changes and watch the conversion rate rocket. Now it may not be that simple, there are many other factors that have to be taken in to consideration such as the brand reputation. But it demonstrates that analytics is not just about the visits and and overall traffic. High traffic levels are nothing without conversions.

So why the buzz around analytics

There's no one reason to explain the current buzz around analytics, but a big part of it is that our PPC counterparts are discovering the benefits that analytics has been bringin us SEO's for the last few years. The current financial turmoil is pushing companies to get the most out of their marketing spend so many are turning to online marketing and as such this is placing added pressure on the analytics packages to deliver the required levels of performance.

All of the above are leading many analytics packages to up their game in what they can track and how they report it - the mobile and social web are currently huge driving factors in the development of existing packages and the introduction of new analytics packages that are filling the gaps that the big players do not cater for, yet.

Are analytics packages way behind the needs of marketers?

This has a question I've been thinking about lots recently and I think the only answer is yes (this only applies to web analytics not usability packages). As an online marketer I want to be able to track everything under one analytics package currently I cannot, which means to get the complete view I would have to pull data from multiple packages and combine them. One of the best examples I can think of is the tracking of visits from mobile phones, why's this a problem? A fairly large percentage of phones cannot execute JavaScript and as such they don't execute the tracking codes on a webpage so the visits and associated data from these devices is not tracked. The second issue has only risen since the introduction of mobile app's - again the analytics packages got left well behind and can't track mobile app activity.

Now I'm not saying this information is un-trackable, you just cannot track all this data in one analytics package, especially not a free analytics package. Whilst you can engage lots of analytics packages to track all these different types of visit, you still cannot get an overall picture from one package. I hear you asking - well surely you can download it all to a spreadsheet, well yes you can, but to get a 100% accurate data you would have to cross check everything to be sure that nothing has been duplicated across each package. Personally I wouldn't want to do this cross checking, due to the time I'm imagining it taking. And yes you'd have to use a spreadsheet as not all analytics packages have an api yet. All this and I haven't even mentioned that there's not an integrated method to monitor social buzz. It's not all bad though, Omniture are really pushing to offer an all in one solution.

It's not all bad

It's true it's not all bad, if you can get over the fact the big analytics giants have been pretty lazy, it's given rise to a range of specialist tracking tools that are incredibly good at what they do. The list below outlines some of the options available to get a full analytical overview of your website:

Standard web analytics:

• Google Analytics
• Yahoo Analytics
• Omniture

Mobile analytics:

• Mobilytics
• Pinch Media
• Mobclix

Social media monitoring

• Radian 6
• Google alerts
• sentimentmetrics

Usability

• Clicktale
• Crazyegg

Other:

• Hittail

Summary

I'm very much an advocate for applications that work extremely well for a specific task, and having specialist analytics packages that track different parts of the web, such as mobile and social means that there are some excellent specialist packages out there that are tailored for the specific purpose, but is this enough to persuade me that it's better to segregate my metrics into the different sections of the web and never see the overall picture? That is an extremely tough question.

I guess if they all offered an api then I would be happy to let the specialist packages do what they do best, then I can use the api to pull down all the data from each package and use this to create the reports I want. For me this solution is perfect as I get the best of both worlds, but what about the small in-house teams who don't have the programming skills or the time to do this? The need for an all in one package is still huge and in my opinion the first analytics company that achieves this will no doubt see an unbelievable influx of customers.

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