How Does Digital Analysis Work?

This is a second article in the series of articles on Digital Analysis. Find the first article on Whys and Whats of Digital Analysis here

Before diving into the sea that is web analytics, it makes sense to get a fair idea of what web analytics is all about. In a nutshell, here’s what really happens:

1. Once you have decided which web pages need tracking, you deploy tags on those pages to track data.
2. Whenever a visitor requests for the tagged pages, the server sends them the pages along with the tags
3. These tags then go on to capture information such as browser type, IP address, page views etc and send the data to the server.
4. The server sends the raw data it receives to the chosen analytics application
5. The application converts raw data into comprehensible reports and presents it
6. The web analyst then sifts through the reports and decides which ones are relevant for your business. The reports are used to analyse and then suggest the course of action for your marketing strategy

In practice, one has a various options to choose from when it comes to the method of tracking data, the type of analytics applications and the metrics included in each report. However, the basic process remains the same for most part.

A couple of things to watch out for

• Consider whether the metrics that are being tracked are pertinent to your business. There's no one-size-fits-all approach here.
• Ensure that your data is getting complete coverage