In recent years, it’s become patently obvious that website optimization is the best way to jump up the rankings and put your website in the best position possible for the future. With the likes of Google Analytics, we can check the areas that need improvement and keep optimizing the website until a good number of people are visiting and clicking through the pages on a daily basis.
For a long time, data analytics have provided all website owners with great way to progress but now we’re reaching a time where we have too much data. As strange as it sounds, we’re able to pull data from every interaction and every process which makes it hard to know where to focus our attentions.
Today, we’re going to be discussing the role website optimization has to play in managing constant data analytics.
Problems with Comparing
When we compare current data analytics, this can give a good insight into how things have changed from one point in time to the next. Using old data to compare, let’s say you’re assessing how things have changed, due to website optimization, from February to March. What are you really comparing?
For both months, the data has come from a single moment in time. If you’re trying to assess conversion rate, for example, you’re reviewing the number of clicks, the quality of your landing page, the quality of your checkout process, and also the price of your available products and services.
Then, you’re comparing this with the exact same data from March including the selling price, landing page, etc.
Where’s the issue?
Unfortunately, this comparison uses two individual points in time without considering the variable factors. Known as ‘current’ data analytics, it can still be helpful to get an overall idea of a trend but it can never be entirely accurate unless every single variable stays the same; you could even argue the same number of visitors needs to be seen for a fair comparison.
Constant Data Analytics
With constant data analytics, we have a real solution because the data from one month to the next isn't just compared. Instead, it’s adjusted and then compared. If you happen to change your pricing structure or any of the other variables, you see a ‘real’ impact on your data analytics and this helps website optimization, which helps data analytics, and so on.
Within the economy, this is actually used quite heavily with gross domestic product (GDP). At first, they have a nominal GDP value and let’s say this comes to $200 billion. However, the pricing changes from one period to the next so how do you get a fair comparison? Firstly, you need a base year and then you can adjust GDP for inflation and it may be that GDP is actually only $180 million. With this lower GDP, it reflects the pricing changes and allows a level playing field while comparing two sets of data.
Website Optimization
If you aren't willing to improve your website over time, you simply aren't going to see results because you won’t climb the search engine rankings and the data won’t be worth comparing. As you begin to optimize, you change up the variables and comparing the time now to a time in the past wouldn't be completely fair. Therefore, we use constant data analytics to assess the results of website optimization and improve the opportunities of boosting optimization in the future.
Benefits of Comparing Data
Firstly, what are the benefits of comparing anything? Well, it allows you to get an idea for how your service has improved over time. After taking steps to optimize your website, you can see an improvement from one month to the next. Therefore, you can quantify the success of your website optimization and see whether there’s still room for improvement or whether you’ve hit the ceiling.
Secondly, after feeling happy your previous optimization techniques did the trick perfectly, you can then see where to target your attentions next. As you constantly compare the data analytics available to you, it becomes easy to spot which areas need the most attention. Do you need to work on your landing page? Are people visiting and not clicking through to a second page? Do you need to improve the checkout process? Are people reaching the checkout before then quitting the site altogether?
In addition to this, comparing data also allows you to assess your current position to any goals you may have for your website. As well as the ultimate goal, to which you can check progress, you should be setting smaller targets you can reach every so often to stay motivated. For example, an aim could be to improve the bounce rate by 2% over the next couple of months.
Overall, data comparison is a great way to plan for the future. If you don’t know where you’ve been and you don’t know how well you’re performing right now, how are you supposed to set achievable goals? With website optimization, you can manage constant data analytics and set yourself up for success in the right way.
Summary
With website optimization and constant data analytics, they live in a mutually beneficial world and your goal should be to reach a positive spiral of events where one improves the other which, in turn, improves the other. Without website optimization, there’s little point assessing the data analytics. Without data analytics, you have no way of knowing whether or not the optimization is actually working.
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