By Loren Johnson, Senior Analyst, Digital Media Practice
Online analytics is a rapidly growing market discipline. As more companies view the Web as a primary channel to reach customers, partners, suppliers, and a wider, global market, the need to understand and optimize Web-enabled content performance is greater than ever. At the same time, as consumers increasingly go to alternative Internet connected devices and platforms - including mobile phones, tablets, PCs, social networks and mobile apps - to access the Web, companies wishing to reach these consumers must successfully navigate an increasingly complex and challenging online landscape.
The Online World: Increasingly Metrics Driven
As companies attempt to quantify Web performance across devices, networks, and platforms, they increasingly depend on tools that can provide real, measurable performance numbers. These can include total numbers of visitors across devices and platforms, which types of devices were used and were the most popular, how visitors found the site or content, and how (and why) these visitors across discrete devices and from within specific market segments then took an action such as registered for a newsletter, downloaded a whitepaper, made a purchase or referred a friend. How effective was the site design or content within the site in driving those consumers toward a desired outcome? Can that performance then be baselined, compared against, improved upon, and maintained? Online analytics solutions enable companies to specifically address these questions and more, providing validation for site design, segmentation, and optimized visitor experiences and outcome performance.
