Take one look at the dashboard of any modern web analytics platform and you will surely get lost in the vast amount of data. With the volume of available data, how does one go about focusing on the most relevant information in order to extract actionable insights?
It starts with having an understanding of the business objectives the company is trying to attain.
Before you dive into the analytics, ask yourself: What’s the purpose of this website?
For example, the primary objective of an e-commerce website is to sell products or services. Secondary objectives include: providing customers with product information, reviews and comparison options.
Armed with an understanding of the primary objective of the website, we are able to focus our analysis on the metrics that are most relevant.
For e-commerce sites specifically, you can learn a lot from the following metrics:
- Conversion rate: How many users are following through with a purchase?
- Average order value: What are the users spending, on average? Is it worth the overall marketing cost to acquire that customer?
- Cart abandonment rate: Of the total users, how many abandon the cart? Is there something we can change to improve their experience and follow through with their order?
Pro Tip: Within Google Analytics, you can customize your dashboards. In the scenario that you’re an ecommerce business, create a view that only includes the metrics relevant to your business objectives.
Once you know your primary objectives and focused metrics, it’s much easier to improve your website, giving your customers the best experience from the landing page to the thank-you page.
Stay tuned for more tips on measuring data and website analytics.