What is Web Analytics ?
Web Analytics refers to collection and analysis of website visitor activity data, to derive at key business decisions, corrective actions etc.
First and foremost thing in web analytics is the user data, how it is collected etc. There are various ways the user data is collected (Mind, each view of a page like the one you are reading now is being recorded by web analytics tools. I am using tools called StatCounter and Google Analytics at the moment).
How Website Visitor Data is being recorded ?
There are various methods which can be used to collect the visitor activity data in a website. The oldest among them is the server logs. A webserver keeps a log of the visitor requests, pages etc, This is the raw form of web analytics data.
The most commonly used method of web analytics data collection method as of date is by using web beacons. A web beacon is nothing but a transparent 1X1 image pixel which gets embedded into each web page being tracked. I will explain how web beacons work in detail in another post.
The most sophisticated method of website visitor data capture is using packet sniffers. A packet sniffer sniffs the data packets being sent from web server to the client system and records it.
Why you need Web Analytics ?
Whether big or small online business taken into consideration, the common objective would be increasing the sales/revenue through the online medium. In this point, it is very much required that the business is aware whats happening in the website, how useful is the website to the users, is the number of visitors increasing and how many leave the site without completing the enquiry/sales section and why. Web Analytics can provide answers to all of these and can also give you business recommendations on the corrective actions if necessary.
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