Data plays a huge role in affiliate marketing nowadays, and the trend doesn‘t seem to be going anywhere soon. If you have firmly decided to sell your traffic and grow your business, you need to know how to find and analyze relevant user data and utilize it in your strategy. Hence, we are here to tell you all about web analytics & how to use them.
Web Analytics & How to Use Them: Web analytics and Metrics Explained
Web analytics and metrics are a representation of the way visitors interact with your site. Knowing which parts of your site are more popular and which could use some more work is crucial in running an affiliate campaign. Metrics are expressed through numerical values via different analytic tools. They give you the necessary information about your business. Some of the most important metrics for an affiliate are
- Clicks and other interactions
- Conversion rate
- Earnings per action
- Return of investment
- Payouts
- Most visited pages
- Average session length
How to Choose the Right Web Analytics Tools for Your Niche?
In a sea of metrics and analytics, it is important to understand which analytics are actually important for your business. There are many so-called vanity metrics, such as page views and numbers of followers on different social media platforms. These may be a great ego boost, but they aren’t valuable when it comes to tracking your business. While these metrics can be useful as a motivator to keep going, you should focus on the analytics with data sources that can give you the most valuable information about your primary business goals. Hence, you will need some more serious analytics tools when you start using cookies and getting information about user interactions.
Before you decide which analytics product to use, it would be great to learn more about marketing tools in general, to be able to make an informed decision. See which analytics are available, and consider if they justify the price. Make sure the data is presented in a comprehensible way – visualization is a great feature for beginners. Additionally, you want to make sure the tool supports offline updates and allows you to see real-time data.
Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization – What’s the Catch?
Converting visitors into leads depends on analyzing data, conducting tests, and optimizing your campaign in light of the results of said tests. You can’t get a better conversion rate if you don’t take the time to see what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t optimize your campaign the tides of time and competition will leave you stranded and forgotten.
Making sure every element of your campaign is performing to its full capacity is demanding, but still straightforward. The process looks like this: You should decide which elements you will be testing. These are most often the so-called key performance indicators or KPIs. Then, get the data from your analytics tool, and analyze it to see which part of your site is the most lacking. At this stage, you should brainstorm some ideas about things you can change up to see if they bring in more conversions. Conduct some A/B testing and see if the changes make a positive impact on KPIs. If they do, implement them to the entirety of your traffic. If they don’t conduct another A/B test and see what works. This way you’ll increase both your conversions and your key metrics.