Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

Chapter 4
Web analytics - how to
evaluate the result?

4.1 The Role of Web Analytics in Digital Marketing

4.2 Identify key performance indicators (KPIs)
4.3 Conversion group
4.4 Measuring conversions
4.5 Web Analytics Tools to Improve the Site
4.6 Web analytics checklist

4.1 The Role of Web Analytics

in Digital Marketing

Web analytics is the pulse of digital marketing. Everything is mea-

sured, and everything is measurable. With Google Analytics and a call
tracking system, you can clearly understand who your client is, how to
improve your site, and which traffic sources are the most beneficial for
your business.
In the first chapter, we said that the ideal process in digital market-
ing consists of several stages:
1. Understanding the company’s mission and product
2. Understanding the product and its USP
3. Competitive Analysis
4. Goals and KPI
5. User persona
6. Content Generation
7. Attracting traffic
8. Analysis and optimization

Almost every step of the way, analytics is necessary.

 Cutting-edge digital marketing

4.2 Identify key performance

indicators (KPIs)

It is very important to understand the indicators given by online

advertising at each possible stage. When you ask a  business owner
what metrics they would like to use to measure promotion results, you
will probably hear something like «sales.» In truth, transactional ana-
lytics brings together web analytics, a CRM, and an accounting system
that tells us how well a promotion is doing.  
Before we get to sales, you need to go through a fairly long chain
of metrics united by Key Performance Indicators (KPI).  
When building a KPI system, it is worth highlighting three groups
of indicators:
1. Attraction
2. Engagement
3. Conversion

Attraction metrics group

We get acquainted with the most massive metrics and indicators,

impressions, and clicks at the acquisition stage.

An impression is a visual contact between your ad and the visitor.

Most sites consider the loading of a page with a banner or ad as an im-
pression, even though we do not know for sure whether a potential cli-
ent saw the advertising message or not.
The oldest form of payment for online advertising is pay per thou-
sand clicks (CPC, Cost per click). Banner ads, video ads, and most me-
dia formats are paid for to get impressions then clicks.

A click  is when a  user clicks on an advertisement. Cost-per-click

(CPC) is the second popular form of payment for online advertising.
The ratio of clicks to impressions is called  click-through rate or CTR.
For example, an ad has ten clicks with 200 impressions; the CTR will be
5%. Although you will find CTR in all the reports of advertising plat-
forms, it is by no means an estimate of your advertising’s effectiveness,
and even more so, you should not dwell on CTR statistics.
CTR gives an understanding of 2 important things:
1. the quality of the advertising message
2. targeting accuracy.
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

The quality of the advertising message

We can write:

• We are a cool company, so order SEO from us.

Or:

• Webpromo is a Google Premier Partner and has had over 500

successful projects. Order now and receive a 20% discount on
an audit!

Which option will be more clickable? Probably the second, but like
everything in internet marketing, it’s best to test it!
Remember, CTR and engagement are not the end all be all statis-
tics. Your task is to get the user to take action.

Example- Let’s say we have two YouTube video ads to get users to

register for a free seminar. The first video ad was shown four times less
than the second, but the conversion rate was still significantly higher
for the first. That means you did something right in the first ad and
something wrong in the second ad. Always test different ad formats
and messages and measure their effectiveness. I want you to use CTR
to get a basic idea of which direction to go.

If you have three ads:

A: CTR 10%,
B: CTR 12%,
C: CTR 3%,

Then, all things being equal, something is wrong with ad C. Either

the targeting is inaccurate, or there was a  mistake in the ad text, etc.
But besides the CTR, it is extremely important to analyze whether these
users made a conversion action. We will talk about this later.
 Cutting-edge digital marketing

Engagement group

At the stage of interactivity, we try to assess how the incoming

users are involved in the site’s content. To do this, we use metrics such
as bounce rate, time spent by a user on a site, and the number of pag-
es viewed per session. Let’s take a closer look at the terms I just men-
tioned.
Bounce rate is the percentage of users who only viewed one page.
The user could be on the site for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, but the us-
er left from the same page from which they entered. A  high bounce
rate could be a  warning sign that the site is not engaging the audi-
ence well, and, most likely, something is wrong with the site or with
the traffic. We need to understand the logic of making a purchase de-
cision. In most niches, users will prefer ordering through a call over or-
dering using a  shopping cart. What does this mean for us in terms of
bounce rate? When a  person orders through a  call, they gain aware-
ness of the product through our website; this won’t show up as a con-
version on the website. We received an actual order, but the user is dis-
played in analytics as a  refusal. For this reason, I  recommend looking
at the bounce rate figures as more of a comparative statistic. Compare
the bounce rate with similar landing pages and traffic sources to deter-
mine if your content is bad or simply how the users interact with con-
tent within that specific niche.
Time on the site is also not a straightforward metric. To calculate
the time spent on a website, web analytics factor in the time it takes to
transition from page to page. Web analytics systems do not count the
time spent on the last page.
Example-  The user viewed three pages on your site. He spent 2
minutes on the first and second page, but there was an interesting vid-
eo on the third, and he stayed there for 20 minutes. But, as I  stated
before, the time on the last page is not counted. And for Vasily and
Google Analytics, 4 minutes will be counted instead of the actual 24.
I  don’t want you to overreact to bounce rate numbers and the time
spent on your site. A digital marketer must consider each case individ-
ually. Perhaps a site has an extremely inconvenient interface, and a us-
er spends a huge amount of time finding what they need.
The number of pages viewed per visit -  An obvious metric to
measure is how many pages a user views per visit. Everything is clear
and transparent here. You should pay attention to how these three in-
dicators compare in traffic sources.
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

Example using a major news portal

Partners bring about one million traffic per month, and search en-
gines bring in one hundred thousand traffic per month. The average
marketer will say that the partners are more important than the search
engines, thereby making two mistakes:
1. Always analyze more than one indicator.
2. Focus on qualitative rather than quantitative metrics.

Let’s take a look at this same data with the addition of interactivi-
ty metrics.

  Traffic / month % refusals Time Viewing depth

Partners 1,000,000 97 0:00:18 1.1

Search engines 100,000 43 0:03:41 3.5

Now it becomes clear that in pursuit of quantity, the project com-

pletely forgot about the quality of the audience it attracted. Impor-
tant!  Monitor the quality of your competitors’ interactivity through
Similarweb and continually improve your content and site, as well as
the traffic quality of the sources you attract. Now we can get to the
most important part, which is determining conversions.

4.3 Conversion group

It is important to understand that actual sales largely depend on

how we process requests from a site. To measure and count this entire
funnel, we need to find out the conversion rate.

What is a conversion? A conversion is a useful action that a user

does on a website. The conversion rate is the percentage of users out of
the total audience who perform a useful action. Conversions are divid-
ed into two categories: macro conversions and micro conversions (less
important). A business wants to calculate understandable and measur-
able indicators such as calls, orders, and requests. Marketers call these
leads, and we classify these as macro conversions. The problem with
macro conversions is that there are not a lot of them. The percentage of
users who perform macro conversions is from 0.1 to 3%. The conversion
 Cutting-edge digital marketing

rate largely depends on the subject matter, product, site quality, traffic,
and many other factors. 
To make the right decisions, we need more information about what
potential customers are doing on our website. For example, let’s say
you run 1000 ads. From the above statistics, it’s safe to say we would
only receive around ten orders. So what do you do now? You need to
collect more data. At this moment, micro conversions come to our aid.
Micro conversions are user actions on a site that indicate a commercial
interest in your product or service.

These include:

• Visiting pages of interest (contacts, promotions, warranty, de-

livery)
• Downloads (prices, presentations, contracts)
• Subscriptions (social networks, newsletters, etc.)
• Any other actions that express user interest.

Important!  If, after reading this chapter, if you choose to simply

list your conversions in a table, you would be spending your time wise-
ly. What cannot be measured cannot be improved! The easiest way to
improve your digital marketing is through simple conversion tracking.

Marketer’s Cheat Sheet - Conversions for Different Projects

1. Online store
Macro conversions:

• Order using a call

• Order using the cart
• Order in one click

Micro conversions:

• Add to cart button

• Online chat
• Contacts page
• Warranty and Delivery page
• Promotions page
• User registration
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

• User authorization
• Subscription to a newsletter
• Subscription to social networks
• Using site search
• Download price list

2. Service site
Macro conversions:

• Order through a call

• Sending a feedback form

Micro conversions:

• Online chat
• Clients / Portfolio page
• Download the presentation of the company
• Contacts page
• Promotions page
• Subscription to the newsletter
• Subscription to social networks

3. Brand website
Macro conversions:

• Call the hotline

• Sending a feedback form
• Viewing contacts
• Viewing the list of dealers
• Page «Where to buy?»

Micro conversions:

• Download the presentation of the company

• Viewing contacts page
• Subscription to the newsletter
• Subscription to social networks

4. Content project website

Macro conversions:
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• Traffic about quality indicators (refusals, viewing depth)

• Subscription to social networks
• Subscription to the newsletter
• Subscription to push notifications

Micro conversions:

• Comments
• Likes, shares
• Participation in a survey
• Viewing a section of a special project
• Using site search

Absolute and Relative Conversions

When starting to work with conversions, it is important to remem-
ber two extremely important points:

• Absoluteness and relativity of conversions

• Assisted conversions

Now we will write these complex words in simple language.

Absoluteness and relativity of conversions

Often, when analyzing traffic sources, users look at the conversion
rate first. For example, a source with a 7% conversion rate is considered
better than another one with 1%. The problem is by focusing on a qual-
itative indicator; you lose understanding of the  absolute values  ​​(the
number of requests, calls) and the cost of attracting them.

Example
Mailing lists conversion rates are several times higher than that of
advertising. In our case, it is 15-20 times higher. Simultaneously, it is dif-
ficult for us to scale this channel, as the number of unsubscriptions and
complaints about spam increases when mailing with commercial infor-
mation rather than useful content. Advertising, in turn, remains scal-
able.

Assisted conversion
Customers don’t make a  purchase decision right away. It usual-
ly takes a  few «touches» for a  user to collect their thoughts and buy
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

something. Imagine dreaming of a new phone. You are thinking about

buying it, but the price might be a bit high. One day an ad appears for
the phone you wanted, and the price is very reasonable. You immedi-
ately click on the ad and immediately start scanning the terms of pur-
chase. The reason for the price change was yesterday a  newer model
for that phone was announced. All you have to do is click buy, and the
phone is yours, but you don’t do it. You then go on various price com-
parison websites, and what do you know, the same online store pops
up. This gives you peace of mind because you know that you have do-
ne your research and have truly found the best price. But you are still
not satisfied. You go to social media looking for even better deals, and
you come across the same online store. Now you are almost absolute-
ly convinced that this online store offers the best price. What do I want
you to learn from this little scenario? That a price aggregator (like hot-
line) and a social network platform could become a conversion source.
This is called an assisted conversion.
I’ll take this scenario even further. You still decide not to buy the
product, and you decide to see how much money you have. You return
to your computer or phone the next day, and you type in «buy iPhone
from such and such store» and place an order. The problem is that an-
alytic systems will say that the search engine was the tool that brought
you the sale, but it was actually those two associating sources.  Only
taking into account last-click conversions can screw up your marketing
campaign. Sometimes assisted conversion chains are short, and some-
times they are long and complex, as shown in the figure below.

AN ASSISTED CONVERSION is credited to a source involved in the

purchase decision but did not directly lead to the final order. Tracking
conversions and their value is the minimum that you can start doing
 Cutting-edge digital marketing

right now, and in a  couple of months, you will see how your digital
marketing is improving. At the very least, this can serve as a better un-
derstanding of your audience in terms of conversions! As your analyti-
cal tools evolve, you will compare how the distribution of performance
differs in the last-click model. For example, in Google Analytics, this da-
ta is collected in the Attribution Models report.

Example - Who visits WebPromoExperts more often, men or wom-

en? Any analyst will be able to find out that it is 50/50. How about find-
ing out who loves free events more? To find out, set up the «Register
for a free event» conversion tracking. What will we see? 75% of the au-
dience are men, and 25% are women. Who ends up buying the cours-
es? Women 65% of the time and men 35% of the time.

ROI (return on investment)

ROI  is used to see if funds were spent efficiently. This is calculat-
ed in different ways, and you can easily embarrass a  marketer during
a  presentation by asking how he calculated ROI. We will focus on the
way Google Analytics interprets ROI. 

ROI = (revenue-ad spend) * 100% / ad spend

For example, we spent $ 1000 on Facebook ads and sold for $ 3500
ROI = (3500-1000) * 100% / 1000 = 250%

What does this 250% figure mean? For 1 dollar invested in adver-
tising, we get sales for 2.5. This figure gives an understanding of the ef-
fectiveness of the advertising channel.
Example - For an online store, the ROI of PPC advertising is 370%
and 1250% for SEO. These figures are your profit.

LTV (Lifetime Value)

LTV is the gross profit that the client brings to you during his or
her life cycle. Getting high LTV requires high-quality work with the cli-
ent base. LTV is a big part of large online stores or businesses operat-
ing in global markets.

Example of LTV.
One of our clients writes student papers for money, and most ad-
vertising sources have negative ROI. Does this mean that the business
is wasting away and dying? No!
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

An average student places orders on such services at least three

times. The first order is usually a  trial order for a  small amount. They
check the quality of the work and whether there is a problem of plagia-
rism, etc. Next, the student puts an order in for a term paper, and this
where the business starts to make money. If a student eventually gets
their diploma, you hit the lottery because this gives great PR and LTV
to your company! Calculating LTV by channel is important for any busi-
ness where a customer buys something more than once.

Results by performance indicators

1. Don’t pay too much attention to quantitative indicators like im-
pressions, clicks, CTR, likes, followers.
2. Form a  list of macro and micro conversions for yourself, record
them monthly.
3. In the quarterly and annual periods, try to estimate ROI and LTV
indicators for the channels used.

When you start, don’t strive for perfection immediately. Start

counting conversions, then ROI, then LTV. It is not a fast track, but it will
greatly improve your digital marketing.

4.4 Measuring conversions

Conversions are measured with tools such as Google Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to learn more about an audience and track
the effectiveness of advertising channels. 

Install Google Analytics 

To start tracking data using web analytics, enter this link into your
browser: 
http://analytics.google.com/

There you will find a  simple registration process, and you’ll get
a code that you or your programmers will place on all of your site pag-
es.

For these tools to become a conversion calculator, you need to go

through a few mandatory steps:
1) Set up goals and events
 Cutting-edge digital marketing

2) Set up an e-commerce module (for online stores)

Goals and events in Google Analytics

Let’s think back to what we have already learned about conver-
sions. For most businesses, this is more or less a  standard list of mac-
ro conversions (ordering through the phone and ordering through
the site) and micro conversions (view pages «contacts,» «about us,»
«shares,» and mailing subscriptions). Using Google Analytics, you can
track these conversions and use that data in the future to improve your
understanding of your audience and the efficiency of your advertising
channels.

If Google Analytics has no targets, it will show you how much traf-
fic each channel is receiving. Even though we would know how much
traffic each channel is receiving, we would still be analytically blind
since we don’t know anything about the data’s nuances. For example,
in our practice, we analyze conversion rates by age. People ages 18-24
used to order courses 1.5 times more often than that of our primary tar-
geted audience of people ages 25-34. After seeing this data, we shift-
ed our marketing focus to be more involved in student activities in eco-
nomic and marketing universities, thus boosting our conversion rates.

What do you need to do to get the necessary data into your

web analytics account?
You need to understand that there are four types of goals. Two of
them are more suitable for commercial projects, and the other two are
exclusively for content.
Let’s start with the commercial goals first:
1.  The destination URL. You can record a  visit to a  landing page
by using a «Thank You For Order» page when a visitor submits an appli-
cation, or you can use micro-conversion pages such as contact, warran-
ty, and delivery pages.
2.  Goal-event.  It will be useful when something important hap-
pens on your website, but the landing page URL does not change.
Content projects aim:
3. The number of pages the user has viewed.
4. Time spent on the site

Let’s go through how to set up business goals in Google Analytics.

Let’s start with something simple like setting goals for the destination
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

URL. The first thing you need to figure out is how to get the user to
navigate to the Thank you URL page so you can measure orders. Sup-
pose it is at site.com/thanks. To set up the target in Google Analytics,
we only need to insert «tail»/thanks. If an agency or developer has giv-
en you access to an analytics account, you’re likely to have limited re-
porting options.

Set up a landing page in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics has a  lot of customizable tools available in the
Administrator tab. Administrator/Target/Target/Target. The next step is
to specify your «tail» and press the save button! Now in any of the con-
version tab reports, you can view data about achieving your goal.

Examples of questions you can answer by setting goals:

1. How many people signed up for my newsletter are from New
York?
2. Who uses the callback form more often? Men or women?
3. How many orders do mobile users make?

If you have an online store, I  recommend you set up an e-com-

merce module in Google Analytics. After setting up this module, you
will have a thorough understanding of key business indicators such as
the amount of an order, the name of the ordered product, and the av-
erage price of an order.

What benefits can you get?

How much money each audience segment and advertising chan-
nel is bringing you and a better understanding of how a product is or-
dered.

Tracking calls
Last but not least is the importance of understanding call track-
ing. A lot of people are going to call asking for information about your
 Cutting-edge digital marketing

product. But how will you know where this person is calling from. Is
he calling from New York? California maybe? What about how he even
found you in the first place? Did he or she visit your website and decide
to call and order something? When people talk about how they found
out about a product, they typically say:

• From the Internet

• From friends
• The site itself

There are three principles of call tracking:

1. Hiding contact information
2. Use promo codes
3. Actual call tracking 
Let’s take a closer look at each of these principles.

Hiding contact information

This method is the cheapest out of all the possible options. You
need to discuss with your programmer how to get the user to click on
your contacts link so you can log that information into your database.

Use promo codes

This method is already less associated with web analytics and more
with your CRM system (process of measuring order sources). Whatever
a user interacts with; whether it be with a mailing, banner, or a promo-
tion on a social network, the user should receive a promo code. When
activated, this promo code should give the user some type of bonus,
discount, or gift.

Call tracking system

A call tracking system will allow you to clearly see which channels
are effective. Call-tracking can be divided into three different catego-
ries: classic, dynamic, and promo codes. Use one number per source.

Dynamic call-tracking
Why is dynamic call tracking such a game changer? Because it al-
lows you to see who is online at an exact moment.
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

Call-tracking by promo codes

Combines promo codes and call-tracking, making it much more af-
fordable.

The history of one restaurant

Strengths of call tracking tool:

• Understanding the effectiveness of marketing activities

• customer service information.

One of our restraint clients had terrible customer service. This is

a  common theme among businesses. You can have a  cool site that
brings in a lot of traffic, but the person picking up the phone on your
side can kill the customer’s desire to work with you in less than a min-
ute. Now we understand conversions, but the puzzle is still unfinished.
There is still ambiguity when it comes to where the user is from.

URL builder
Along with understanding targeted actions, it is important to know
where the visitor came from. To answer this question, you need to get
acquainted with a URL builder. One of the most important things that
web analytics systems give us is the segmentation of traffic sources.
The campaign, the ad, and the advertising request can help us deter-
mine where the user who performed the desired action on the site
came from. This is not the default. For example, going into the traffic
source report in Google Analytics, you’ll find a Facebook/referral bar re-
sponsible for showing you all the traffic from this social network. A URL
 Cutting-edge digital marketing

layout tool and Facebook Advertising complement each other because

it helps Google Analytics determine where your traffic is coming from.

Like any other company, in 2010, we launched a business page and

a  paid advertising campaign. Our instructions to our employees were
simple: «Go to every social network, like everything, then comment
and repost content.» After a  while, the Facebook/referral bar generat-
ed a substantial amount of growth within our business, but there came
a time when there were applications for SEO and PPC advertising. Then
the question arose which channels are generating the most leads? We
were able to find out after we went to the URL builder and agreed that
we tag all links. The result was quite interesting. The company’s Face-
book page generated the most traffic, but it did not generate leads. As
we later realized, the content was too complicated for the client audi-
ence. I then worked extremely hard to get myself acquainted with ev-
eryone in the digital marketing field by regularly speaking at events
and handing out business cards.
The URL builder tool has become an integral part of understand-
ing our audience, and it has also helped our mailing, banner, social net-
work, and PPC advertising. It is of the utmost importance to use a URL
builder for any internet promotion tool in which you invest time or
money.
Once I  go through the following instructions, I  recommend clos-
ing this book and doing some practice. Using the URL builder tool, let’s
show Google Analytics properly recognize your traffic sources.
Enter the URL in Google, and let’s get to work. Start with the land-
ing page first. This is where you lure the audience in. Your landing page
can be a product page, a category page, or an article on a blog.
You must follow three parameters to be successful:

Source - A website or a partner on which a link is placed.

Channel - Your website or partner website that brings you traffic.
These could be mailing lists, paid advertising, articles, social media, and
messenger groups.
Campaign - What exactly are we advertising?

Do you doubt whether you need it?

I will give a simple example from our practice. Everyone loves so-
cial media. Marketers and business owners often believe that every-
thing you do on the internet should start with social media. According
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

to our analytics, we have about 60 active groups on Facebook with an

audience of more than 1000 people. When we posted an announce-
ment, how many of these groups do you think generated traffic? Three!
Now let’s think about this from a practical point of view. How long
do you think it would take for a  content manager to post all these
links? Probably at least two hours. We just saved two hours of time and
resources by using a URL builder. A URL builder and correct web ana-
lytics are things that most people know about, but they tend not to use
them. My advice is to add these tools to your digital marketing cam-
paign so you can better understand what is going on with your com-
pany online.

What should be done after all of this?

1. Take the time to set goals and events.
2. Set aside a couple of hours for programmers to set up an e-com-
merce module if you have an online store
3. Determine how you plan to count calls.

4.5 Web Analytics Tools to

Improve the Site

One of the most valuable web analytics system applications is to

work to increase the conversion rate on a site. We have already learned
how to measure conversions. Now it’s time to increase them.
Google Analytics has a separate service that allows you to improve
conversion rates using A/B testing campaigns. You can launch several
different campaigns at one time and see which one is the most effec-
tive. That way, you can make an informed decision on which campaign
is best and you can avoid guessing.

What does Google Analytics do?

Google Analytics allows you to download up to 6 different versions
of a page and set a traffic condition.
When you’re experimenting, it’s critical to understand the main
conversion and what you will measure. You’ll need:

• A Programmer
• A Designer
• A project manager or marketer who will oversee the campaign
 Cutting-edge digital marketing

Example -  We worked with an online store that sells generators.

We wanted to experiment on the pages of the product categories. By
changing the layout, we were able to increase their conversions by 3.5
times. The online store had 3.5 times more orders with the same vol-
ume of traffic.

Conclusions and recommendations

Web analytics is the pulse of any online business. If you take ana-
lytics seriously, you can measure anything and everything.
This is a really simple checklist that you can use:
1. Review your list of business goals that you made during the first
chapter
2. Make a list of macro and micro-conversions for your business.
3. Start to measure it in Google Analytics.
4. Experiment, analyze, then optimize your marketing campaigns!

For me, analytics has become my favorite part of digital marketing,

and now that you understand them, you will love them too.

4.6 Web analytics checklist

When you finish this chapter, you will have a cheat sheet that will
help your business take advantage of digital marketing’s most impor-
tant thing: measurability.

1. Form the SMART goals for your business and online project.
S – Specific 
M – Measurable 
A – Achievable
R - Relevant 
T – Time-bound 
Example- Get $10,000 in net profit in the second quarter of this
year

2. Write down your macro and micro conversions (You can use your
marketing cheat sheet from this chapter)

An example of an academy
Macro conversions:
 Web analytics - how to evaluate the result?

Ordering a course through a form

Ordering a course through a call
Micro conversion:
Subscription
Registration for a free event
Subscription to social media profiles

3. Implement the above macro and micro conversions in the

Google Analytics settings and call tracking systems.
You need to set up:

• Goals and events

• An E-commerce module for your online store
• Determine what approach you will take to track calls

An example from WebPromoExperts

4. Start tagging all the links through the URL layout to clearly un-
derstand from which sources key request applications and orders are
coming.
5. Regularly check your KPI’s once a month, once in a quarter, once
a year.