Analytics

Analytics

So now there is Google Analytics and Yahoo Analytics. What are the differences and which one is best for you? First we will talk about what analytics is, the technology behind it, and how you benefit from it.

Web Analytics

Web analytics measures website visitor's behaviors when arriving to your website. This information measures the performance of your site so that you can use it to improve upon key factors to increase responses and determine future marketing campaigns.

Technology

Both Google Analytics and Yahoo Analytics use page tagging which is a small invisible image through JavaScript. With this it passes along image requests as well information about the pages and the visitor itself. The service assigns a cookie to the user which identifies them for each and every visit.

JavaScript automatically runs every time the page is loaded.

Additional information can easily be added to JavaScript.

Page tagging can report on interaction such as clicks, how someone uses Flash movies and MouseOver.

How this is all implemented is by a hidden snippet of JavaScript code that the user adds to every page of their website. This code collects the data and sends it back to the data collection server for processing. With Google the processing takes place hourly. They do note that it can take up to three to four hours of time. Yahoo processing is within minutes.

Google Analytics:

The Internal Site Search

This show how many visitors search your site, what they looked for, and where they end up.

Benchmarking

This shows your site usage metrics and whether they underperformed or outperformed those of your industry vertical.

Trend and Date Slider

You need to compare the time periods and select date ranges to not lose sight of your long term trends. This tool is for just that.

Ecommerce Tracking

Trace transactions to campaigns and keywords. You can also identify your revenue sources.

Funnel Visualization

Find out which pages result in lost conversions.

Site Overlay

With this tool you can see traffic and conversion information for each and every link.

Email reports

You can schedule personalized report emails that contain the information that you want to share.

GeoTargeting

Find out where your visitors come from and find where your most productive geographic markets are.

AdWords Integration

You can also buy keywords on Google AdWords and use Google Analytics to learn which keywords are most profitable to your business.

Yahoo Analytics:

With these you can View key performance metrics within customizable executive dashboards and set goals. Then you can track your progress and meet specific needs.

You tailor your reports with the Custom Report Wizard. With these you can add categories for customs fields.

Management to track and optimize your marketing campaigns regarding CPC, CPM, CPA and your ROI. You can also organize your reports and analyze your campaign results.

Analyze how different groups of visitors respond to each of your pages and the visitors themselves.

You can compare search engine price information for optimizing your ROI.

Identify the purchase of products and create reports with this feature.

Track your visitors through every step for analysis of the visitor.

Check your website from one month to another with reports.

Identify the most popular paths that you visitors take in your website.

With this tool you can do several things such as monitor site changes, and system outages. You can also create email alerts and share reports with others.

Which Is Best For You?

At this point Yahoo Analytics is only available for Yahoo! Small Business customers who host e-commerce sites with Yahoo!, as well as to advertisers who work with Yahoo! Custom Solutions and Yahoo! Buzz Marketing.

Yahoo! Web Analytics will be implemented in stages throughout the rest of 2008 and into 2009. So this is not fully functionally for everyone.

On the other hand, Google Analytics is. If you have a Yahoo! Small Business you are in luck and may be able to use Yahoo! Web Analytics. I would still recommend using Google Analytics as a tool. Everyone should be using the power of Google Analytics.

Author:

Sandi Baker

http://letusgetitdone.info/