Guest comment: What can web analytics tools really tell you?

Web analytics are a vital tool for marketers striving to meet the demand for personalised online communications. But let's review what these tools are actually telling us.
 
There are two principles types of analytics tools. Firstly, there are 'free' tools like Google Analytics and Yahoo's Index Tools, which offer first rate solutions for quite deep analytics around site numbers such as the number of visits, bounces and sales the site has achieved, and over what period. Then you have the more advanced solutions like Omniture, WebTrends and Nedstat that can make these details more bespoke, identifying key metrics like timelag from arrival to sale, user journey and basket values.
 
When looking at who visited the site, the more advanced tools can recognise IP addresses [the principle 'identifier' for any standard Internet connection] which, when used with additional data can start to give you an estimate of where people have come from - from location to business name. However, this still leaves us with a lack of understanding of 'who' it is that's visiting the site.
 
Privacy law means that cookie-based tracking can't offer personally identifiable information, so to get a greater understanding of who's visiting the site we need to tap into how people make themselves known. Taking the lead from blog analytics tools, we can see a new wave of tools that can offer us the opportunity to know more about our audience.
 
For example, MyBlogLog – now owned by Yahoo, is a registration-based community of blog readers. Anyone can sign up to be a member of MyBlogLog and allow their identity to be seen by other MyBlogLog users if they have the code installed on the page. You can see this code on many sites, usually in the form of a 'who is visiting' panel in the sidebar. There is one on www.cheeze.com/blog. This tool allows blog owners and their visitors to connect and form communities of like-minded content producers and content consumers. However, it only works if consumers have signed up for it.
 
Another method being promoted by Clicky Web Analytics, [www.getclicky.com], was developed to help blog owners to understand who is on the site through blog commentary. Clicky works to match back the IP address of any person that has left a comment on the blog - this being their method of identifying themselves, enabling the analytics tool to identify the visitors' behaviour on the site historically by matching back the data and moving forward by remembering the details.
 
So, with these we can start to understand more about who is coming to the site and in turn attempt to reach out and connect with them.
  
From bespoke tools for measuring advertising performance, to new tools for understanding the 'who' element, whilst one tool gives the opportunity to connect with visitors, the other offers the ability to see and connect through commentary. Both are powerful tools to help understand the big question about who visits.
 
The next question to solve will be the 'why' – why did someone visit, why did someone not buy. This why question is sometimes solved with onsite surveys, and it will be interesting to see if, with this wave of personalisation, we start to understand why.
 
Successful analytics management will involve the collation of many different sources of data, a combined understanding of all the channels and an ability to act quickly to connect with the visitors.
 
Until we have a single solution that gives us all the information in one place, you can start building a good picture of how people engage with your business online by making sure that you have the right tools for the right jobs and not being afraid to use as many as you need.

By Jamie Riddell

Director of Innovation

Cheeze

www.cheeze.com