Are Analytics By Brighton Web Designers Relevant to all Websites?

Most people in the Brighton web designer community recommend the use of analytics to their clients as a matter of course, and rightly so.  But just how useful are they, and are they relevant to all website owners?

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The first thing is to understand what analytics are and what they actually tell you. 

The whole point is to gather information about people who visit a website, namely:

·       Where they come from, i.e. which website.

·       What Device they are using, and if possible what browser they were using.

·       Which page they landed on the website, and how long they took looking around.

·       Where else they went on the website, what pages, how long they browsed and which links they clicked on.

There are several Analytics packages available, but the most commonly used is Google Analytics.  It’s free and, it has to be said, probably the best which is to be expected from the most sophisticated search engine provider available – they really do take website data seriously.

The way any Analytics program gathers information is by your Brighton web designer placing a little snippet of code onto each website page that allows the analytics provider to track visits to the website and, where possible, back-track where that visitor came from.

So how useful is this information?

It really depends on the general marketing approach of the business, but in general you can say:

·       Small websites, possibly,

·       Big websites yes,

·       Ecommerce definitely.

The logic is quite simple.  If you are a small business and your website is purely to have an online presence, and it only has a few pages, then all you really need to know is how many people come to your website each month.  There probably isn’t much value in an in depth analysis of how visitors move between the few pages on the website, particularly if there aren’t that many visitors each month anyway.

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If the website has a lot of pages, however, chances are the business is much larger and will have a lot more visitors.  In this case it is important to know who is coming to the website, and which pages they’re heading for.  This can then give real clues as to where to put the main business and selling information so that it is seen by as many visitors as possible and drive up conversions.  It can also indicate which areas of the website are worth investing in for further web design and dev, and even if app design Brighton would be helpful.  The clue to this would be if the vast majority of visitors were coming from smart phones, rather than tablets or PC’s.

Similarly with eCommerce websites, where the data provided could be invaluable.  An example of this would be if the sales were indicating that a particular product was not selling well and the website owner was thinking of dropping that line.  The analytics could show that there were in fact a lot of visitors to that particular web page, indicating people were in fact interested and it was something else putting them off, possibly price.  The owner could then make a more considered decision on what to do (e.g. make it a sale item).

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https://blog.kissmetrics.com/50-resources-for-getting-the-most-out-of-google-analytics/

Of course these are generalizations, and there will always be websites for businesses that don’t necessarily fall into such neat categories.  This could be websites that cater for a niche market that may not have a high number of visitors, but the conversion rates are much higher than industry averages and so having a good idea of where those visitors come from in order to make an in-depth analysis is worthwhile.  In such cases, the Brighton web developers need to have a good understanding of their clients business in order to offer the best advice on the inclusion of analytics with the web design and dev Brighton.


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