Advanced Web Analytics

Everything About Advanced Web Analytics

The basics of web analytics for law firms can be tough to master. But once you already know about your conversion rates and your unique site visits, you may be confused about which web analytics report gives you the results you need to really change your website's effectiveness. If you want the best results—20 to 30 percent conversion rate increases, doubling of web traffic—you'll need to use advanced web analytics. Going beyond the basics of your tools can ensure that you're getting exactly what you want out of your web analytics reports.

Why Standard Web Analytics Reports Aren't Enough

Looking at your first web analytics report can be tremendously confusing, but as you've used web analytics reports more frequently, you've probably familiarized yourself with the statistics that are important for your law firm. You may also start to notice problems—blind spots in your statistics, things you can't figure out from a standard web analytics report.

When you started investigating your web traffic, you may have been surprised at the sheer number of web analytics reports available with your reporting tool. What you may have learned through trial and error is that one great web analytics report can often be more useful than a thousand that don't give you exactly what you need.

Quantity is much less important in advanced web analytics than quality. Many analytics professionals refer to standard web analytics reports as “data pukes.” It's easy to see why: in spite of the amount of data provided in a web analytics report by Google, Yahoo, or other tools, it can be hard to know how to translate that data into the kind of real-world results that matter.

For example, your standard web analytics report may report your conversion rate and which keywords are bringing traffic to your site, but you may not know how to figure out which keywords are bringing in the best potential clients. Advanced web analytics can help you differentiate between keywords so that you can focus on the ones where there is the most potential for improvement.

The important thing to remember is that your business is unique. Google didn't set up its web analytics reports to help your company specifically. If you want the best results from your web analytics report, you'll need to use advanced web analytics that keep your firm's goals in mind.

Custom Web Analytics Reports

Creating great advanced web analytics reports means that you'll need to understand exactly what you're looking for. What are your goals? What frustrates you about your web analytics report tools? What information would make your web analytics reports more useful to you?

For example, you may be frustrated by how many bounces are included in your web analytics reports. While some companies focus on eliminating these bounces altogether, maybe they don't matter as much as you think—especially if you're getting bounces from search engine results, not paid clicks. This can happen if, for instance, you're highly ranked in search engine results for a topic that involves multiple types of results. The bounces you're getting may not be possible to convert into paying clients—so why focus on them?

If this happens, You may want to create advanced web analytics that can focus only on your non-bouncing site visitors, so that you can understand how they interact with the website. You can design a custom web analytics report that helps you focus on the clients who may be most interested in your website—for instance, those who have looked at several pages or watched at least one of your law firm's videos.

Social Media Web Analytics Reports

An increasing amount of web traffic today comes from social media like Facebook and Twitter. When you want to increase the conversions you get from social media sites, you need advanced web analytics to understand your social traffic. A standard web analytics report about social media can give you part of the picture, but if blogs, Twitter and Facebook are a major part of your marketing strategy (and they should be), you need to go deeper.

A custom web analytics report can tell you a great deal about how your firm is perceived on social media sources. You may want to know if a new social media strategy—for instance, starting a new Twitter feed about your law firm's results—has paid off. When you use advanced web analytics, you can produce a custom web analytics report that details exactly how much value each Twitter or Facebook click has had for your firm.

When you're using custom web analytics reports, it's much easier to keep your goals in mind at all times. A narrowly tailored web analytics report can give you much more granular information much more quickly than using basic reports, so remember to use advanced web analytics techniques instead of just using what Google or Yahoo provides.

Using Advanced Web Analytics for Redesign

Once you've got your custom web analytics reports, you may want to look into redesigning your website for better traffic flow and increased conversions. You may, for example, want to use a custom web analytics report that shows which of your pages are generating the most conversions and which are driving clients away from your website.

Next, you can begin to analyze the differences between those pages. A key part of advanced web analytics is getting inside the minds of your clients by looking at which pages drive your traffic. If a particular type of content—for example, video—seems to keep people looking at your website for longer according to web analytics reports, you may want to include more video.

Keep in mind that once you've redesigned your website, you shouldn't stop using advanced web analytics. Using the same type of custom web analytic report can keep you on top of trends that are affecting your client base. By being proactive with your advanced web analytics, you'll be able to anticipate changes to demographics and site traffic before your competitors using standard web analytics reports even know what's going on.