The Impact of Web Analytics on E-Commerce from Each of the Following Perspectives: Management, Technology, and Organizational
Web Analytics
Web analytics is a general term that entails the study of the effects of Web site on the users (Hasan and Polya 2009, p814). Harinath et al. (2011, p118) defines web analytics as the web data analysis. In other words, the business intelligence permits analyst to have an insight of web-based businesses such as customer support and e-commerce. Web analytics permits an individual to recognize consumer behaviour and identify general trends on sales so that the business can personalize its services for the consumers and increase their satisfaction levels. With web analytics, the business can understand how well its online, content, and products processes are functioning (Harinath et al. 2011, p118).
The process of getting web data and creating a data warehouse entails collection of data, which is, getting data from commerce data, third-party sources, campaign advertising, and web logs, and transformation of data, that is, making the existing log data useful and relating it to the company’s campaign advertising, third party, and commerce data sources. It also entails reporting of data, which is, publishing and storing the data in a meaningful way such that the directors and analysts can comprehend what they are reading (Harinath et al. 2011, p119).
The main aim of web analytics is to transform data collected from various sources to get a meaningful intelligence concerning the company’s website. It entails the process of storing, analyzing, filtering, and collecting commerce, click-stream, and third-party data. The click-stream BI situations range from designing the web site better, understanding the navigation patterns, and comprehending what the users search to personalize the recommendations (Harinath et al. 2011, p118).
Currently, e-commerce companies or organizations make use of web analytics software to evaluate actual details. These details include the number of people visiting their site, the number of visitors who are unique, “how they came to the site, what keywords they searched with on the site’s search engine, how long they stayed on a given page or on the entire site, what links they clicked on, and when they left the site” (Hasan and Poyla 2009, p814). Web analytic software is also utilized in monitoring if the pages on the site are working appropriately. With such information, the administrators are capable of determining the popular site areas and areas within the site that are not getting traffic. The administrators then use the data collected to streamline the site in a manner, which creates the best experience (Hasan and Poyla 2009, p814).
E-commerce is done through the email and the World Wide Web. Television, radio, print media, web banners, and emails are among the common means used by the companies to attract consumers to their websites. The websites generally function with company’s consumer relationship management system, which assists in the customization of the consumer experience every time the consumer goes online. Presently, e-commerce covers various business processes such as manufacturing and logistics. To become effective in e-commerce is not an easy task because investments required are not small. The main success elements in a business include a competent management team, a well-organized business framework and infrastructure, a secured and well-designed website, good post-sales services, and a good product (Hasan and Poyla 2009, p814).
The Impact of Web Analytics on E-Commerce from the Management Perspective
Measuring usage is essential to the website manager due to a number of reasons. First, the general measure of the numbers of resources, visits, and users accessed can offer a rough estimation of whether the web site is seen as beneficial by the users. It is evident that if the web site is not being used by anyone, it is not doing very good. Second, data usage can be utilized to enhance the web site’s usefulness and usability. Analysis of the key process such as searching or downloading dynamic or static content, purchasing or downloading an item, raising a query with the site operators, and breaking “down these processes into the steps needed to complete them, can show whether the process was completed, or, if not, at what step it was abandoned” (Haight 2007, p17).
In operational terms, the applications or the pages that require to be accessed throughout the process describe the process. Thus, experimental transformations can be done at the point where majority of the users abandon the process. Data usage will indicate whether the completed rate increased or not after the transformations were done. The process of constant improvement can be frequent until the real improvements occur. Data usage can evaluate the effectiveness of the attempts made to enhance and market the website. For instance, transformation of the web site or certain pages data usage can be linked with the attempts to increase their usage. For example, the number of individuals accessing a Web page can be evaluated for time before and after the email was sent supporting the page content (Haight 2007, p17).
Today’s e-commerce data is important in the determination of the management decisions made in the competitive environment. The difficulty of making managerial decisions within the information age continually reduces due to the availability of relevant information on the internet to solve managerial challenges. From human resource management to production management the information age allows the manager to obtain important insights for intervening when needed. In terms of e-commerce management, the application of web analytics offers important information regarding consumers and other market forces. From web analytics details such as the consumer distribution around the globe and their actual numbers, it is easy for the manager to employ such information to come up with solutions to production and marketing approaches. In today’s e-commerce, managerial decisions depend highly on market information since the nature of the organization falls under the knowledge organization (Sveiby 1996, para.1).
According to Sydänmaanlakka (2002, p65), the modern day approach to management cannot be successful without technology and knowledge of the market. In the context of the need to know the business environment with clarity and accuracy, web solutions must be involved. Web analytics facilitates in the analysis of the web clues that the organization needs to operate at the top of its capacity. It is possible to coordinate every departmental need from the internal information systems, just as it is possible to understand the external environment by studying competitor moves as well as consumer behavior. Managerial decisions in e-commerce must therefore follow all clues obtained from technological assistance in understanding the operational space offered by a competitive environment.
Management decisions at the globalization platform are some of the most difficult tasks to carry out without web analytics assistance. Using various managerial theories from which different approaches originate, web analytics findings can be modified to fit in the needs of the organization. It is possible to design managerial approach that responds to challenges in the market by the use of data from web analytics. As an illustration, using web analytics, managers can opt to employ strategic approaches to reorganize operations and achieve productivity.
The Impact of Web Analytics on E-Commerce from the Technology Perspective
The human society is fast changing, thanks to the increase in computer usage. Computer use as a sociocultural characteristic and civilization in the 21st century involves all human activities embracing computer technology. Business involvement of computer technologies defines e-commerce, which includes the use of the internet to complete business tasks. The consumers in this computer rely heavily on information from the internet to make their consumption decisions. In order for business to continue to offer solutions to specific needs of the market, understanding consumer behaviour from their interaction with the internet is very important (Brown and Burby 2007, para.3). Web analytics is the effort dedicated towards understanding consumer needs by mere study of their interaction with websites, which leave clues about what they might be looking for. Web analytics would not be possible if the technology environment took longer to allow the computer reliance achieved today.
In terms of the level of website involvement that web analytics follow to study consumer behaviour, it is easy to arrive at several e-commerce conclusions. As an illustration, it is easy to find out which product the consumers look for most on the internet in a minute. For producers and suppliers in need of investment information, web-analytics enables finding out the exact product that would find a ready market. In addition, the e-commerce platform also makes it easy for businesses to study the technology dependent consumers to find out the distribution of the market not only locally but also across the globe. With the arrival of the high technological solutions to both producers and the consumers, it is possible for marketers also to determine what the market needs and accordingly offer advice on production. The society continues to embrace high technology in all spheres of life due to improved innovation for products and processes. Production is mechanized and to obtain accurate market projections for demand and supply, businesses apply technological solutions to also remain competitive.
The most important characteristic of modern day business is mainly the reliance on technology and innovativeness to offer solutions to the way business occurs. To illustrate this aspect, it is important to generate the comparison in technology use in the old days with today. Before the computer age had established itself in commerce, manual operations for various tasks dominated business activities. However, within the computer age, nearly all business processes comprise of technological innovation and modification. In terms of technology application in e-commerce, it is now easy to facilitate business activities across the globe with the ease of a click of a button. Web analytics enables e-commerce design according to the expectations of the market. According to Kaushik (2007, p15), several areas of improvement in business have originated from the ease with which technology allows business to continue.
One of the most celebrated areas of technology in business is the e-commerce platform. Innovations in information and communication technology (ICT) allow communication and relaying of business information across long distances at the most convenient speeds ever. The online platform for carrying out business transactions, negotiations and research is perhaps one of the main determinants of global business success in the recent history. The level of involvement of technology in business is ever increasing on daily basis, due to the evolution of business in order to fit in the technology and information age.
Web analytics contribution to e-commerce has enabled the technological products designed to track business interests to penetrate the market. As mentioned above, the most important feature of the information age is the reliance of information and communication technology for various solutions. This reliance becoming part of the sociocultural aspect of the global society influences the products designed, particularly electronics, in order to follow consumer needs in their respective locations. As an illustration, the smartphone technology enables consumers to use their cell phones to communicate with service providers and producers for various products. Applications added on the iPhone for instance enable the consumer to communicate with a number of markers for their services as easily as possible. The social media continues to offer a channel through which consumer response can be followed to facilitate better e-commerce in this age than before.
The Impact of Web Analytics on E-Commerce from the Organizational Perspective
In the organizational context, Public Relations practitioners have just began using web analytics. Web analytics will assist the organizations in optimizing their strategies and demonstrating their public relations value. There are many reasons why organizations should the technology of web analytics. Firstly, web analytics permit public relations effort to be compared with other types of marketing. Conversion rates, traffic, and other forms of web analytics metrics are gathered from all referral sources including paid search, earned media, unpaid search, and advertisements. This indicates that it is easy to monitor exactly the outputs from advertising and public relations, and how they affect the business outcome when the same metrics are used (Duncan 2010, p4).
Web analytics can notify strategies based on the empirical evidence. This is because web analytics can indicate which forms of coverage (both in the social media and in traditional media) assists the organization in reaching its business objectives or goals. The data can be used to answer questions such as if the organization can shift more of its attention and resources from the traditional to social media or which types of online audiences respond to the media through making purchases and which are not. Public relations practitioners can get answers to these questions using web analytics. Instead of viewing online media and in particular social media as a baffling cutting edge, web analytics can assist public relations practitioners to focus on the media that is likely to be successful in driving the business objectives (Duncan 2010, p5).
Web analytics offer an affordable alternative to the marketing mix model. Before the inception of web analytics, tracking media coverage for long period of time was the only method used for measuring the impact of public relations activity on the business outcomes. The method employed the use of advanced statistical modelling to link media reporting to the metrics linked with organizational goals (for instance, sales). Marketing mix models are time-consuming and costly for majority of the organizations that have to adopt them with any regularity. This is due to the fact that there is huge involvement of statistical expertise and historical data (Duncan 2010, p5).
Using web analytics, the organization is able to directly measure the consumer behaviour who have been exposed to various media (such as the traditional and social media) for a particular length of time with minimal need for Bayesian, time series-based, or regression statistics. It is important to note that web analytics do not replace the marketing mix model, which also takes into consideration offline marketing and customer behaviour. However, web analytics offer a cost-effective and accessible ways of measuring the relative contribution of public relations to business objectives in a manner that was unavailable for majority of the organizations (Duncan 2010, p6).
Though web analytics hold the promise of offering beneficial insights into public relations practitioners, the practice has not been extensively adopted in the public relations measurement. The largest obstacle for the public relations professionals is to incorporate web analytics with other types of social and traditional media measurement. For organizations that evaluate their social and traditional media coverage and public relations efforts, knowing how to link web analytics reports and regular media reports looks like a difficult task. Knowing whether similar media was covered in each report, “data quality control, and correlating the metrics from media reports (e.g., sentiment, message penetration, etc.) with web analytics metrics (e.g, unique visitors, sales conversions) requires time and quantitative or statistical expertise that many communications teams do not currently have” (Duncan 2010, p20).
As mentioned above, the modern organization is built on the information concept where all decision-making contributions are defined by the awareness of alternative outcomes. In terms of the contribution of web analytics on e-commerce today, the nature of the organization is defined by the position of the customer. Consumer responsiveness is a characteristic that defines the modern knowledge organization (Sveiby 1996, para.1). Consumer data from web analytics includes successful transactions from web visitors as well as incomplete web visitations. Both the successful buyer and mere visitors to a website offer a significant detail for organizational decision. Today’s organization does not attach value to completion but the opportunity available upon any move by the customer.
Alternatively, the modern day organization is based on an environment sensitive setting, which demands that corporate social responsibility is assured. In terms of the contribution of the customer visitation, the public image and opinion held about the organization is very important to success. Presenting the organization as a likeable brand is an intangible asset that is built from many perspectives that the web analytics concept easily identifies. E-commerce is therefore an important tool that can assist in the development of approaches to create the desired consumer preference ranging from welcome and display characteristics. Giving a humanitarian face of the company through e-commerce could be achieved through the website, and the impact generated can be assessed through web-analytics (Bolman and Deal 2003, p113). References
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