The Art of Web Analytics

This blog is dedicated to web analytics. A good place to start is therefore to try and define what web analytics is.

My definition goes as follows:

Web analytics is a new, fast-growing discipline that helps companies optimize their websites, online marketing activities and customer relationships by means of collecting, analyzing and reporting data about internet users.

To this I think we should add that web analytics has four distinctive characteristics:

• Web analytics can use a variety of data sources, but it is almost always based behavior tracking
• Web analytics always aims to understand internet users in a natural setting - that is, as they navigate a specific website or web universe
• Web analytics is primarily based on quantitative data and statistical analysis
• Web analytics helps companies not only to achieve certain business goals, but also to understand web site visitors and to give them an optimal experience by enabling them to complete the tasks they themselves define