Web Analytics and Data Collection

With the help of web analytics, web sites are becoming a very useful tool in understanding the people who use web sites. Web analytics are used to assess and improve online marketing by analyzing things like website traffic volume, referrals from affiliates, click paths, and customer satisfaction surveys. Web analytics can be very useful but in order to utilize the effectiveness of these services it’s a very good idea to know what kind of information is needed from the program. Google analytics is a very easy program to use and implement to find trends or patterns or any kind of activity on their websites. Webtrends is another very popular program but it carries a much higher cost to attain so for a smaller business this program might not be the most affordable option. Web analytics are very useful that come in many different programs offering different options among them all.

 

Web analytics can be collected using two different methods, and knowing each option can assist in getting the most from the data collected. One way of collecting information is the use of log files. Log files are stored on host’s servers and they are automatically recorded. These files can contain a range of things like how much time was spent on the site, what pages were visited and can then be used to manage storage and bandwidth issues. The second way of collecting web analytics is called the “Java Script Method”.

With this tactic, instead of using log files, it uses Java Script code that is embedded into every web page. The code collects information and sends the activity to a computer hosted by that analytics service provider where the site owner can use a web browser to view the findings. Each method has is differences and pros and cons. For example, the log file method is generally significantly cheaper only paying a one time software fee and a lot less time and effort is needed to implement it where as Java Script is usually charged monthly and it requires some time to embed all the coding into each website.

 

One very unattractive aspect of Java Script is that it is reliant on the placing of cookies. Cookies are a bit of information that your website can have a visitor store in their browser. People have caught onto this trend so now there is the issue of people refusing to accept cookies from sites. Websites that require their users to accept cookies are now losing a large portion of their potential visitors or cliental.

Permission Marketing

Marketing today has taken a significant turn in how it is approached. Marketing has become a contest for who can capture your attention. There used to be a time when if we wanted people to see our products, all that advertisers had to do were put up billboards and people would look at it. People used to listen if you asked them to but over time, this has become so tedious to consumers that we no longer want to pay attention to things that we don’t need at that moment. Consumers are no longer willing to give up their time to see advertisements for products they don’t need.

Over the last few decades interruptive marketing has been the way of attracting a consumer to your product. Finally, after we’ve been subjected to so much clutter and noise from all the different competitors, interruptive marketing has started to decline in effectiveness. One of the newer approaches to marketing products is permission marketing or relationship marketing. Seth Godin has published multiple books that describe how permission marketing works and what it’s all about. Basically, permission marketing is gaining a relationship with consumers. Companies are now trying to gain loyalty and trust from consumers over time in exchange for information. If the company asks for personal information that the consumer feels uncomfortable giving at that stage in their relationship, the consumer is free to just walk away. That is why there is an emphasis on relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing is aimed at building long term relationships with customers using one to one marketing. One to one marketing is becoming important because it’s becoming more expensive to attain new customers then to try to maximize the customers you already have. With relationship marketing we try to retain the loyal consumers we have and gain as much as we can from those customers.

Advertising via mass media used to make it very easy to spread ideas but recently this kind of marketing is having decreased effectiveness. We can simply choose to just ignore messages we no longer want to pay attention to. Consumers have become much more aware of how little time they have and how they don’t want to waste that time viewing advertisements that mean little or nothing to them. It’s the idea that when consumers have too many choices and not enough time they find a solution by ignoring the advertisements. The newest idea is to not sell products to the general population anymore but to focus now on the innovators and early adapters. By focusing on this smaller group, the group who is usually obsessive about their products and purchases, we simply hope that this group will like our product and possibly tell a friend. Most of us will agree that given a review critic’s advice or a friend’s advice, we all will most likely pick the advice from our friends be it good or bad. These are all ideas that Seth Godin presents in this video of him explaining many successful and unsuccessful marketing attempts.