Not only does today’s extensive online world enable any business to sell its products or services to global audiences, it also provides in-depth insights into consumer behaviour. In fact, there is an untold amount of data about interactions and transactions available at your fingertips every time a consumer browses your website, clicks a hyperlink, replies to social media activity or completes an ecommerce transaction.

This is web analytics; the collection of data to be measured, reported on, and examined by a business in order to make more informed and effective decisions. But what else do you need to know about analytics? What types of web analytics are on the market? And how do you choose between all of the options?
<h4>Understanding web analytics</h4>
Despite the fact that web analytics about consumer activity can help any organisation achieve better business outcomes, there is little to no point in gathering data if you aren’t able to read and interpret it properly.

Not every piece of data available will be relevant or valuable according to your organisation’s objectives. So, your attitude towards web analytics should be more concerned with measuring quality rather than quantity, because at the end of the day it is the customer’s experience that matters most.

But by attracting, nurturing, and retaining customers through the use of web analytics, a whole host of benefits can be enjoyed. These include operational efficiency, lower costs, and greater loyalty.

You will need to leverage the signals and trends found within data to enhance the user’s experience, but this can be done through a comprehensive of audit of digital and software assets relevant to the business, such as your CRM, website, social media, and other systems or sources.
<h4><strong>Types of web analytics</strong></h4>
<h5><strong>Google Analytics</strong></h5>
This is the most popular analytics platform but also the most simple and straightforward. It primarily focuses on traffic visiting your website, how they got there, how long they stay for, and various other metrics in-between.
<ul>
 	<li>Divides up your audience by things like source, location and operating system to see how various demographics behave</li>
 	<li>Collects and collates ecommerce data and reports, which can include revenue and sales information.</li>
</ul>
<h5><strong>Optimizely</strong></h5>
Along with analytics, Optimizely also boasts an A/B testing and personalisation platform that attempts to deliver “the best experiences for every customer across desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps.”
<ul>
 	<li>Custom goal tracking to measure actions such as sign-ups and conversions.</li>
 	<li>Advanced targeting, allocation and scheduling features for testing, which requires zero coding, HTML or programming knowledge</li>
 	<li>Access to real-time results for faster and better decisions</li>
</ul>
<h5>Ruler Analytics</h5>
Here at Ruler Analytics, we can give you individual visitor level information that other platforms can’t. From leads and sales to revenues and companies, our platform presents information about people looking at your website in a simple, actionable, and intuitive way.
<ul>
 	<li>Presents you with unique details of conversions, such as the marketing method, keyword, tweet or post that led to success</li>
 	<li>The ability to discover phone call data including duration, how long it took to answer, and how many you missed to enhance the customer’s experience.</li>
 	<li>Exhaustive information about individual and company data, such as pages viewed, geographical location, number of employees, and financial details.</li>
</ul>
<h5>Choosing the right analytics</h5>
Although some analytics platforms are free, additional capabilities and functionality will cost more money. Therefore, it is imperative you choose the right platform from the get-go.

Google Analytics is a great foundation to build from, as it can help you understand the type of traffic coming to your site and consumer habits on each page. Optimizely on the other hand can assist in building a better solution in relation to what you found out from Google Analytics.

But to truly improve conversions while simultaneously delivering a better experience to your audience, consider implementing Ruler Analytics. To see whether our analytics platform can work for you, take a demo or start a free trial today.