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.