Who said data kills?  This is the question I repeatedly ask after discovering the vast number of businesses that fail to drive decisions based on data.  In the online marketing world, data is arguably the most important resource for marketers.  Data not only helps formulate marketing strategies, but it also becomes a guide to determine how businesses should best utilize their resources. 

At MoreVisibility, Google Analytics is used to track client’s traffic, formulate marketing strategies, drive business decisions, and ultimately increase the bottom line.  Simple, right? No, merely using data to guide best practices is only half of the struggle.  Businesses must not only collect data, but monitor analytics consistently to gain a macroscopic understanding of what is truly happening on a day to day basis. 

In essence, data can and should be used to determine any anomalies occurring on your website.  Constantly examining analytics in this way allows you to dive into mishaps in real time, in the event that a link has been broken or is not tracking correctly through Google Analytics.  Often, businesses won’t realize until months later that data is not being tracked when the anomaly is identified.  The unfortunate part is that crucial information is being lost each time businesses fail to use preventative check and balance tools to minimize human error.

Here are some simple ways to help you better utilize analytics data:

• Set weekly alerts on Google Analytics to monitor all campaigns and links
• Enter annotations when there are reasons for traffic spikes and/or dips
• Conduct frequent website audits to validate coding
• Use “include files” as part of a template whenever adding pages to a site
   

With the exponential growth of internet users, data collection and monitoring is paramount for business growth and development.  Be sure to use some of these helpful tips to maximize the benefits of data collection and analysis for your business.    

Are you interested in trying another tool to track your website analytics? There is a new free tool, currently in beta testing, that helps you track your visitors in real time. That tool is called seevolution.

The set up is pretty simple and involves a 3 step process. Firstly, an account is required and you can add up to 5 domains for free. Secondly you will need to add a snippet of code which is a javascript code that will help you track visually your website in real time and thirdly, you can start seeing the tracking being performed in the site by the use of a toolbar which is located transparently on the site you are using.

SeeVolution has many useful features to help you see the behavior of your visitors; they include an X-Ray feature that uses a heatmap technology, which allows you to track using an overlay layer of your site displaying the areas of the page with high/low user activity. Another feature is the Overlay Tool Bar, which focuses on site based data and user behavioral data. Seevolution also monitors the site for performance, up time and any malfunctions by providing alerts.

 
The service provided by Seevolution is not as detailed as Google Analytics or Mint, but it does provide a different view of how to see user behavior and a different perspective on how to view the analytics of your site by providing a toolbar within your site that allows you to track the information. The great thing about it is that you stay on your site, there is no going to a secondary site. I would recommend to use this tool as a secondary means of tracking analytics, since it does not provide as much information as you can obtain using Google Analytics or Mint.
 

Citation

http://www.seevolution.com