What Is Digital Analytics?
Digital analytics or digital data analysis refers to a set of actions for collecting, evaluating, comparing and monitoring online strategies created to bring brands and potential customers closer together.
By selecting the relevant data, it is possible to make interpretations guided by them, which provides valuable insights into the posture of users on website pages, corporate blogs, social networks and other digital channels in which the organization is present.
Collected through specific tools – Google Analytics being the most famous -, these numbers support different types of interaction with the consumer , evidencing from the channels of your preference to the type of sales campaign that you like best.
What Is The Purpose Of Digital Analytics?
The main objective of digital analytics is to provide information that supports assertive decision making in the online environment.
After all, the choices that yield the best results are those supported by well-constructed arguments, especially those that rely on data that prove one or more theses.
Shall we see an example?
Imagine that an entrepreneur is thinking about opening an online shoe store aimed at a targeted audience.
However, he does not yet know the market, nor does he have the first customers to base his decisions on their interests.
Given this scenario, he is advised to collect data on competitors in his region to identify a demand that is not being fully met.
When consulting information from specialized consultancies, contextualization tools such as Google Trends , organic searches and social networks, the entrepreneur perceives a considerable amount of searches for women’s sports shoes.
It checks the availability and costs of these products with manufacturers, does some tests and directly contacts local teams to sell their products and start promoting their e-commerce.
Did you realize how much digital analytics helped in the segmentation of the business , giving the first clues about a demand, until then, unknown?
These assessments can serve a number of different contexts, depending on the brand’s needs and purposes.
How Does Digital Analytics Work?
Digital analytics works from different types of data (such as big data ), which are selected, analyzed and compiled to generate useful information for the company.
Remembering that data are sequences of quantified or quantifiable symbols, while information is born from reading the data .
A simple example to understand this dynamic is the bounce rate, one of the indicators shown by Google Analytics regarding a web page.
The bounce rate shows the percentage of users who left the site after accessing that page, so when it is high it is usually seen as a negative.
However, it can signal, for example, that the user has completed a positive action (or conversion), such as downloading a company e-book or even closing a purchase.
So, he left the site after fulfilling interesting actions for the brand.
A high bounce rate on a landing page (page optimized for conversions) can mean lack of clarity in information, inadequacy of the product or service to the target audience, lack of enough features to generate interest among the audience , among other reasons.
That is, a high bounce rate can suggest positive or negative scenarios, depending on the context.
Therefore, the crucial steps of digital analytics do not focus on collecting and compiling data, but on interpreting it intelligently within the big picture.
What Kind Of Business Can Implement Digital Analytics?
Any business can implement and benefit from digital analytics.
Years ago, it was rare to hear about data outside departments like Information Technology, or outside the walls of technology companies .
However, the world has changed profoundly from the popularization of the internet, which is present in the lives of billions of people daily, influencing consumption habits and ways of relating to people and brands .
Because of the convenience and agility of smartphones, few individuals have not yet surrendered to the search for information, products and services through these devices, generating data with each online activity performed.
With an eye on this trend, businesses outside the technology field have begun to realize the potential of using this data in a strategic way , in order to get closer to their target audience in a subtle – often even pleasant way.
This is the premise that underpins the employment, for example, of content marketing , which delivers useful materials to increase website traffic, start conversations and earn the trust of potential customers.
Brand recognition increases the chances of closing a deal with these people in the near future.
Thus, several organizations are taking another step towards digital transformation , which places technology and aspects of digital analytics at the center of their processes to remain competitive and attractive to the consumer.
In other words, investing in digital data analytics has become critical to the survival and growth of companies in all industries.
How Important Is Digital Analytics For A Business?
Now that you understand the concept and how it works, it’s time to talk about the importance of this area.
Below, we comment on the relevant points that give reasons to adhere to digital analytics .
Understand The Customer
Gone are the days when it was enough to deliver quality solutions and choose a good location to acquire and retain customers.
In the digital age, it is vital to bet on the internet presence to be found by the consumer, but just having a website and pages on social networks doesn’t work.
After all, you will be competing with thousands or even millions of competitors on the network, which requires a differentiator in your digital marketing strategy .
The most assertive differential is knowing your target audience, building personas and customer journeys to discover connection points, create opportunities to be seen and attract the consumer.
This knowledge begins and continues through the analysis of digital data.
Anyone who leaves knowledge about the customer aside ends up undermining the chances of gaining their attention and building a lasting relationship.
Analyze Behavior Patterns
Digital data is capable of indicating useful behavior patterns to stimulate certain audience responses .
And you can do a simple test to prove this maxim.
Open your social media page and notice which posts had the most interactions, such as likes and comments.
Then see which ones yielded the most reach.
If your goal is to increase brand awareness on this platform, combining elements from both posts can be an assertive strategy , always prioritizing the tactics that led to greater reach.
If, on the other hand, you want more interactions, focus on the elements and subjects covered in posts that have resulted in the most comments.
Data can also reveal the times your followers are online, days of the week they are most likely to interact, and the highest-rated pages on your site.
Measure The Performance Of Actions And Strategies
Sometimes the failure in a strategy is not the actions themselves, but the lack of monitoring and indicators to measure its performance.
Without this monitoring, it is practically impossible to know what is working and what requires correction or even the exchange for a more effective action.
The tip, then, is to determine the relevant indicators even before putting an online strategy into practice, starting from analytics to check evaluations that make sense of the data.
If you carried out a campaign to increase the amount of sales during the holiday season, for example, one of the key indicators or KPI (Key Performance Indicators) will be the Return on Investment (ROI).
ROI compares the value used with the conversions obtained, that is, the amount of sales, to verify if the investment was worth it.
Make Assertive Decisions
Before the support of digital data analytics, many decisions in the field of advertising and marketing were made “in the dark”, based on deductions that did not always correspond to reality.
But the use of data qualified the evaluations , allowing to prove the success – or failure – of actions on the internet.
This history and knowledge of the target provide solid guidance for decisions, giving consistency to the next steps taken by companies.
Increase Predictability
Having predictability helps in the management of the business, giving assertiveness to the positions taken by the leadership .
Therefore, this component is the key to maintaining financial and commercial stability , reducing risks and damage to the company’s image or budget.
And predictability is based on data, including digital analytics actions, as most of the data is extracted from the internet.
Monitoring and interpretations focused on data intelligence provide greater security for each step taken by managers.
Digital Analitycs: 5 Main Tools
There are many tools that provide digital data and support for consistent analysis , both paid and free or with trial versions.
In this topic, we have gathered the five most popular ones to give you an idea of how the dynamics of collecting and evaluating this data work.
Follow up!
1. Google Analytics
Google ‘s data collection and analysis tool , GA is the best known and most used in the digital analytics universe, and this is no accident.
GA is easy to install, has a user-friendly interface and can be used to monitor websites, blogs and applications – in addition to having a very complete free version.
Once installed, the tool captures and compiles various types of data, simplifying analysts’ lives by presenting them in the form of comparative charts .
If you and your team are starting to put together a data management strategy , you can start betting on Google Analytics , and you certainly won’t regret it.
2. Google Search Console
We talked above about the need to be found by the target audience to expand your company’s business opportunities.
Therefore, it is necessary to invest in optimization strategies for search engines or SEO (Search Engine Optimization), in order to obtain a better positioning through search engine robots.
Google ‘s Search Console was born to bring recommendations to those who have webpages, in order to improve ranking in organic search and attract more visitors to your website or blog.
These recommendations are based on data collected by the tool about audience, traffic and searches related to the site’s content.
3. SEMRush
This is a popular tool among teams that have a little more knowledge of SEO and want to improve their techniques to maintain a good ranking on Google .
SEMRush helps in this task in a complete and intuitive way, presenting an overview of the main keywords , those that attract traffic to a website or blog.
It also presents data on organic traffic, paid traffic, top competitors in terms of keywords, backlinks, domain comparisons , among others.
Remembering that SEMRush is a paid service.
4. AT Internet
With hundreds of metrics, the Analytics Suite , from the French company AT Internet, delivers complex data analysis with high granularity, in order to allow the characterization of the public that visits your website or blog.
These and other functionalities, such as the customization of screens according to the client‘s strategy, make the Suite an advanced tool to capture, select and compare data efficiently.
The service is also paid, offering a trial version.
5. Adobe Analytics
Like other company solutions, Adobe Analytics is a paid and full-featured tool, ideal for companies that want to get ahead of the competition, following user actions in real time .
This is one of the service‘s differentials, which makes the difference, for example, during campaigns or AB tests – in which two versions of the same page or email are presented to the public at random, in order to verify which one has the highest grip.
It also provides robust mechanisms like predictive analytics and versatile reporting.
What Are The Main Metrics Analyzed In Digital Analytics?
It all depends on the objectives, as the metrics serve to monitor the efficiency of the established goals , make adjustments and follow up with those that give good results.
But there are basic indicators for those who own a website and run paid media campaigns – two common actions for companies that want to maintain their presence in the digital environment.
Below, we list these KPIs that serve to guide actions with different purposes:
- CTR (Click Through Rate)
- CPL (Cost per Lead )
- CPC (Cost per Conversion)
- CPA (Cost per Acquisition)
- ROI (Return on Investment)
- Churn rate (customer turnover)
- Total visits to the website
- Traffic for each channel
- Relationship between new visitors x returning visitors
- Average time spent on the site
- Website bounce rate
- Number of conversions.
How Can I Apply Digital Analytics To Business?
At this point, you might be wondering where to start with this set of promising practices to jumpstart your business .
And we will help you in this process that, little by little, will become routine for you and your team.
Follow the steps below and start your digital analytics strategy right now.
- Plan your first objective and then break it down into goals that will be achieved and monitored through the data
- Study the fundamental KPIs for your company and purpose, choosing at least 5 of them to measure the success of your actions
- Choose the data needed to do this monitoring
- Hire a support tool, which can be Google Analytics or another that we detail above
- Test different initiatives and track them to understand which ones work
- Compile the results and hold regular meetings to review them. For example, once a week with the responsible team.
