What is Web Analytics and Why Is It Important for You?

Web analytics is a key tool for businesses seeking to understand user behaviour on their websites and mobile apps. Harness the full potential of data to optimise marketing activities, improve website functionality and increase sales.

Discover which analysis tools and methods are most effective, and how compliance with GDPR affects data collection.

Uncover how web analytics can revolutionise your business.

What is all this web analytics about?

Web analytics is an IT field focused on tracking traffic on websites and in mobile applications. 💻

Tools and platforms designed for this purpose are responsible for recording, collecting and reporting data. Reports on what users view and do on sites help you better understand their needs and preferences.

• The insights you gain from data analysis can be used to streamline your websites and apps, positively impacting the sales of your services or products, the consumption of your content, and enabling you to fine-tune your marketing activities.
• If your company provides users with a service or app, appropriate tools allow you to easily observe how it is being used.
• Knowing which features are used most frequently allows you to make better decisions about the development of your website or application.
• Web analytics also enables error reporting for issues users may encounter. Contextual analytics data (e.g., regarding the device or browser used) can be helpful in reproducing and fixing these errors.
• You can also conduct web analytics within your corporate intranet – for example, on internal informational or training sites available only to employees – to check their engagement with this content.

How do web analytics solutions work and what benefits do they offer?

If you have a website, web analytics tools can provide you with reports on who visits your site and what they do there.

• Every page view, button click, or even product option selection can be recorded and later aggregated. This provides data on which pages are the most popular, where users spend the most time, or which products are most frequently added to the cart.
• Having access to such reports makes it easier to make decisions regarding your website's direction.
• Data from web analytics can be used by your website development team. By analysing the most clicked elements, those responsible for content on the site can evaluate user engagement.
• The most commonly used metrics include: time spent on page, bounce rate, and conversion rates, such as product or service purchases, account creation on a site, or submission of a contact form.
• You can also utilise custom measurements that you configure specifically for your website and business.

What must every website owner know about GDPR?

Since 2018, website owners in the EU have been subject to GDPR - General Data Protection Regulation (RODO in Poland).

When using analytics and marketing tools on your site, you need to be aware of:

• What data they collect – the presence of an IP address already constitutes processing data covered by GDPR; you may also be collecting more detailed data, such as email addresses.
• What happens to this data – where it is physically stored and for what purposes it is processed.

If you are recording IP addresses or using other personal data for marketing or personalisation, you must implement a Consent Management Platform (CMP) solution.
Many such tools have been developed, and some analytics platforms offer integrated solutions for collecting consent.
 

• Your company must also have documentation stating:
  • Which tools are used?
  • What data is collected?
  • What is done with this data?
    
• Sometimes, web analytics is assigned to website management or brand marketing teams who may not be up-to-date with the regulations applicable to their specific company.

It is worth ensuring that they are adequately safeguarding user data processing security.

'What after GA3?' – A brief overview of free web analytics tools

• In the last year, you have likely encountered hashtag#GA4, the new version of Google Analytics. The previous version, GA3, also known as 'Universal Analytics', is now unavailable.
• For many years, GA3 led the way as the most popular web analytics tool – widely used by marketers and amateurs alike.
• Some companies took advantage of the option to automatically switch to GA4, while others were forced to completely discontinue Google services due to integration difficulties or costs. If you are in this situation, know that there are many alternatives! Today we want to present a summary of available options:
   

➡️ Open Source Platforms: Matomo, Umami, Countly, Plausible Analytics
➡️ Solutions that are part of or add-ons to major company offerings: Microsoft Clarity, Cloudflare, Adobe.
➡️ Solutions integrating much more than just classic web analytics: Amplitude, Snowplow, Heap, Mixpanel, Hotjar, as well as our native Polish product – Piwik PRO.

Has your company switched to GA4, migrated to one of the listed solutions, or perhaps another?
Let us know in the comments!

Analytics won't pull data out of thin air – are you tagging your links?

One of the most important practices in web analytics and internet marketing is using what are called UTM tags in your links. 🖥️
 

• What is link tagging? It simply involves adding extra parameters to the URL of your website that you place somewhere. This 'extension' of the link allows you to later determine which one was clicked by a user landing on your site.
• Tagging is applied by placing links, for example, in YouTube video descriptions or Facebook posts; see examples:
  ➡️ www.mojastrona.pl/?utm_campaign=mojFilmik3&utm_source=youtube
  ➡️ www.mojastrona.pl/?utm_campaign=post20230902&utm_source=facebook
   

🔹 These same 'UTM tags' are used by practically every ad on the internet – you have likely noticed them several times after clicking on an offer.

🔹 The name 'UTM' comes from 'Urchin Tracking Module' – software that was purchased by Google to lay the foundations for Google Analytics. In this way, UTM tags became the standard in web traffic analytics.

🔹 It is important to establish a systematic approach to tagging your links and stick to it. There are several standard parameters available: 

• utm_campaign
• utm_term
• utm_source
• utm_medium
• utm_content

Many systems also allow you to add custom parameters if the standard ones are insufficient or cannot be used in a specific case.

Do you use parameters in your links, and if not, will you start?

Subject matter support for this series – Michał Gonera