3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Data

Analyzing data to increase the performance of a website is not a new idea. In fact, the concept has been around for years and organizations have spent billions of dollars gathering and storing this information. Typically, companies that are gathering web data use it to gain insights on how their key performance indicators trend over time. While this is a valuable use of data, there are many analytical methods that can be applied to maximize the ROI of your analytics platform. Check out these 3 ways to get the most out of your data:

1. Conversion Funnel Analysis

Implementing an intuitive sales flow on your website is the first major step in guiding your consumers to the point of conversion. While the end of this journey may differ industry to industry, the concept will remain the same: getting your visitor to accomplish a specific task.

Once the path is defined, it is monumentally important to monitor the rate at which each visitor progresses through each stage of the funnel. This helps you identify portions of your funnel that consumers may be getting stuck.

One of the ways that you can perform this analysis is by taking the total visitor count of any given level and dividing it by the prior level. For example, take the home page count and divide it by the product listing page count and you get an 88% conversion rate from the home page to the product listing page. Repeat the process to view each stage of the funnel on the same trended graph. After completion, you can trend this rate over time.

Word of caution: whenever you are analyzing relative metrics (i.e. ratios) it’s advised to consider their absolute counterparts to determine if anomalies in trends are due to volatility in the aggregated values.

2. Pathing Analysis

As the name suggests, a pathing analysis is used to uncover the path (pages and site sections) that your visitors navigate through during their visit. This can be used in conjunction with the conversion funnel analysis to see where people are going when they fall out of your funnel. Often, we have preconceived notions on what a typical journey consists for our visitors, but this will differ compared to reality. Hence the importance of consistently reviewing the most common paths that visitors take through your site and use this as a guide for optimization efforts.

3. Engagement Scoring

Engagement scoring gets brought up quite frequently and for good reason. When done properly, it provides a single snapshot into a customer(s) potential value. In short, engagement scoring is the practice of defining important actions/behaviors that visitors display when engaging with your website. Once you have defined the actions, you assign a score to each action and then sum (or average them) to tally a final engagement score for any given visit/visitor. This score can be utilized to measure the performance of any aspect of your site and its ability to assist in your consumer’s conversion. It can also be utilized in an effort to understand what (if any) incentives your customer may need to convert.

Putting It Into Practice

The Monday morning scramble is a reality whether you are B2B, e-commerce, or otherwise. During a that Monday weekly standup, stakeholders want to more completely understand the root cause for any performance issues that arose since the last meeting. Without a sophisticated analytics practice, your team may have a difficult time knowing where to start their deep dive.

Conversely, if your analyst had access to any of the reports and associated analytical service support, they would be far more capable to either answer the question on the spot or at least have a good place to start their work. Having the tools to quickly and efficiently answer questions around changes in performance can save time and resources.