Web Analytics

Published Jun 13, 2022Updated Oct 11, 2023

Web analytics are a measurement of user behavior on a website or app, providing insight into how users are interacting with a design. Web analytics trends can reveal issues with content, navigation, visual design, and other aspects of a product or design. While they are commonly associated with marketing, web analytics are also helpful for user research.

Web analytics are a source of quantitative data, since they can be measured numerically, and are considered a behavioral research method, since they observe real user behavior. Web analytics are an evaluative research method, and can only be gathered after a product has been released to assess its performance.

Examples

Common forms of web analytics include:

General web analytics: Analytics such as page views and traffic acquisition data are measured by tools like Google Analytics.
Engagement data: Engagement data reveals how deeply users are engaging with your design, and include analytics like time spent on a page and bounce rate.
Conversion data: Conversion data focuses on key business goals, such as whether users click a “contact sales” or purchase button, download a white paper, or sign up for your newsletter.
Audience demographic data: Data about who is using your website or app, for example, age and gender data, or data about which devices or browsers people tend to visit from.
A/B testing: A/B testing presents two or more different versions of a design to users to test their effectiveness. Multivariate testing is similar to A/B testing, but involves varying multiple design elements at the same time.
Heatmaps or clickmaps: Heatmaps or clickmaps offer visual representations of how users are interacting with a design and where they are looking or clicking the most. Common heatmap tools include CrazyEgg and Hotjar.