Web Analytics - Entire Flow of Business Process

In this post I will  be covering the steps involved in Web Analytics. Web Analytics in an organization should be just like a development cycle starting from Define phase to Reporting. Below is a visualization of an ideal Web Analytics process. This process is more suited for tech organizations which already have defined KPIs with regular weekly/monthly releases of new features on their website and also to the people who respond to the RFPs will find the below post much useful.

The First in the Web Analytics Business Process is the DEFINE Phase:

This phase includes Requirement Gathering, Design Business Requirement, Define Roles & Responsibilities, Preparing Solution design documents.

1) Requirement Gathering: This is the start of the Web Analytics process and it deals with an Analyst collecting tracking requirements from stakeholders. Similarly this step will also involve review of feature specifications of new items that are part of a release cycle. An example of a new feature can be a new page being added on the website or a new outgoing/external link being added or even an A/B Test.
2) Design Business Requirement: Once all the requirements have been gauged, the Analyst will create a Tracking Plan/Analytics plan/ Design to define the variables for Web Analytics. All the business Key Performance Indicators and Goals/Objectives of the Websites will be defined in this phase. This is usually an excel document containing a matrix of all the variables and their corresponding values. This deliverable is the Requirements Specifications Document.
3) Roles & Responsibility: The roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders/analysts working on the project are defined in this stage. This defines the project team structure and their deliverables.

Assigning Responsibility Key Role

4) Design Document: A Solution Design Document is a main document of the web analytics implementation. The design phase begins with preparing solution design or reference document. This deliverable is Solution Design Document.


The Second is the DESIGN Phase

Designing the tags for data collection

Based on the Design Document the tags are generated and placed on to the Head or Body with the parameter need to be tracked. Using the page tagging of Web Analytics tool, the visitor browsing and activity data on our website is collected. The javascript tags are defined for all the parameters listed in the solution design document.

The Third Step is the DEPLOY Phase

Implementing the Tags for Data Collection
The Web Analytics tools use a special JavaScript tag that we place on our web pages to collect visitor activity data. When a visitor browses our website page, this JavaScript tag initiates interactions between the visitor’s browser and Web Analytics tool. The tag collects data about the visitor’s browsing behavior and sends this information to the web analytics tool.

The designed JavaScript tag will be inserted on each page of the website. Once the tags are deployed on the website, we can begin viewing reports of our visitor browsing activity on our website. Reports are generally available 24 hours after the tags are deployed. 

Preparing validation checklist

The validation checklist document has the current list of tags, the potential issues and their resolution methodology in place. This is done to ensure that the analyst is reporting on the correct data to stakeholders or business heads.

The validation of Web Analytics tool installation can be done by:

• Checking the tags accuracy: We can check the tags accuracy by using debugging tools. There are many free web analytics debugging tools available like Firebug etc… In the future, I will write a separate post on this.
• By reports/dashboards: We can review our reports and dashboards which can tell us whether our tags are correct or not. But better to follow the first method so that to have accuracy in place before the reporting starts.

Once the Validation checklist is over the Design Document is updated with the notes from Validation Document.

The Fourth step is AUDIT

Once the site goes live, the auditing is done every 2-3 weeks. At the end of every week, data is collected and audit is done. This step evaluates the website for proper implementation of tags. It identifies the Duplicate tags, Incorrect & Missing tags.

The Fifth and the Final step is REPORTING

After the data is found to be clean, it is the responsibility of the Analyst to report numbers resulting from the feature which went live during the previous release cycle. The Analyst will also provide analysis (explaining the data or conversion etc) and possible recommendations/next steps to improve the website even more.

This, according to me is an ideal end to end process which organizations should be following to manage Web Analytics. It is vital for a big organization to incorporate these steps in their overall plan for Web Analytics to ensure smooth functioning.