Web Analytics

Web analytics is the process of analyzing the behavior of visitors to a website (on-site Web analytics) or the impact of a website on its users in proportion to that of websites on the rest of the Web (off-site Web analytics). This entry discusses the key characteristics of Web analytics, the current status of the Web analytics landscape, and the differences between online and off-line analytics for reputation management strategies and measurement protocols.

E-commerce companies and other website publishers often use Web analytics to analyze the behavior of visitors to a website in order to determine what parts of the website are receiving successful visits and what parts are not drawing attention successfully. In addition, corporations can look at utilizing Web analytics for a variety of different circumstances when it comes to evaluating where people are going to find out more information about their company, which pages are most frequently visited, and how much time is spent each day by a single user. In addition, exploring the key terms associated with the searches by users and how they come to a website is an important reputation component to look at for Web analytics. Associations with brand names can provide a window of opportunity for corporations to evaluate the reputation of their brand based on the information being shared, discussed, and searched for online.

Web-analytic software can also be used to monitor whether a site’s pages are working properly. With this information, Web administrators can determine which areas of the site are popular and which areas of the site do not get traffic. Web analytics provides these site administrators and publishers with data that can be used to streamline a website and create a better user experience. These systems have to be regularly updated not only to keep the information current but also to prevent cyber attacks and hacking of the website. Hackers occasionally try to hack into specific pages of a website, so analytics functions and tools can help determine where these hackers are getting into the system and prevent them from doing further damage.

If a website for a brand is compromised by cyber attacks and hacks, this can raise some additional points of concern and can negatively affect the corporate reputation. For example, Anthem announced in February 2015 that its website had been hacked and more than 80 million users of this U.S.-based health care system were compromised, with their information being leaked out to the hackers for use. Some news reports have linked the increase in tax refund fraud to the Anthem data breach, with individuals affected by the breach saying that their data were used by those who filed false returns to receive a refund. With the rising incidence of cyber attacks and hacking, many corporations and government agencies are partnering together to formulate new protocols and software programs utilizing Web analytics to prevent these[Page 902] crises by protecting the information found on corporate websites and, in turn, the reputation of the corporations.

Web analytics is often used as part of customer relationship management analytics. The analysis can include determining the likelihood that a given customer will repurchase a product after having purchased it in the past, personalizing the site to customers who visit it repeatedly, monitoring the dollar volume of the purchases made by individual customers or by specific groups of customers, observing the geographic regions from which the highest and the lowest number of customers visit the site to purchase specific products, and predicting which products customers are most and least likely to buy in the future. The objective is to promote specific products to those customers most likely to buy them and to determine which products a specific customer is most likely to purchase. This can help improve the ratio of revenue to marketing costs.

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