Tech has largely dictated the ways of doing business and it is not news that the battleground for businesses today is online. In this war of scramble for online shoppers, nothing comes easy and this is already evident by the low success rates of online businesses.
There are many reasons why these businesses fail but the main ones include lack of critical online skills or concepts, heavy competition and using websites that are not optimized for users and search engines. Like any brick and mortar business, the point of operations for online businesses is the website and the success is measured by the number of traffic that it receives.
For this reason, you will need to ensure that infrastructure, applications and all areas of your business IT systems are running effectively.
Understanding metrics and analytics
Almost every online business operator knows about Google Analytics solutions which offer free tools for measurement of website traffic, applications as well as data that help in gaining customer insights. These insights are very important in understanding the profiles and preferences of your customers, the effectiveness of any effort that you implement and receive any signal for the non performance of your IT systems.
Metrics are used to measure the success of a desired variable or dimension over time such as browser, operating system, source and devices among many others. While there is a huge number of metrics, common website tracking metrics include traffic, bounces, conversion rates, completions and value.
Dimensions and metrics are the building blocks of analytics which involves the discovery, interpretation and communication of critical patterns of data that aid in making informed decisions in areas such as digital marketing.
Importance of data analytics
Understanding analytics especially in marketing allow you to test the different tactics against one another in order to concentrate on the ones that are most productive.
It will also give you a true picture of platforms and audiences that you would otherwise not have known a well as prove the effectiveness of campaigns that you have initiated. For this reason, you are able to make quick and effective changes based of the facts and not guesswork hence avoid wasting your resources on non-performing campaigns.
Where you may be going wrong with data analytics
While you may understand the importance of analytics very well, it is possible that you are only used to receiving analytics reports which does not give you any clue about the important insights concerning your business.
Monitoring your analytics is essential in identifying patterns and determining the things that you are doing right and those that you are not. It is the only way to prove if your efforts are effective and also identify areas of opportunity that are able to grow your digital business.
Agencies that effectively monitor their clients’ analytics like https://www.appoptics.com have solutions that make sure that you evaluate your past and present data and make changes based on the findings.
They also enable filtering and grouping of data so that you can visualize the data of interest in real time.
Establishing a culture of effective measuring and monitoring of your analytics is very important to proactively use the data for insights and business success. It begins by identifying the most important metrics and then monitoring them regularly in order to optimize your business goals.
With this, you will have a competitive edge over your competition and your tech powered business will be among the 10% that will surely succeed. The basic set up of data analytics platforms may have plenty of dimensions and metrics but you can always customize them to suit your specific business.
