Web analytics : ecommerce case study in a B2B environment

Abstract

The web has become one of most powerful tools of communication in the world today, representing one of the most important environments for the promotion of organizations and the realization of transactions worldwide. Because of that, measuring the results and the return on the investment made on digital materials is increasingly important for professionals, whose job is to monitor knowledge and performance. In this context, web analytics applications are a valuable tool for continuously assess these indicators performance, focusing on the organizations’ website as the core component for most digital strategies. The collection and analysis of web data ultimately aims at content, design and business optimization, based on educated premises supported on figures and facts, as opposed to decision processes based solely on personal inclination from decision makers. In order to explore the application of these techniques in a business environment, we resort to Google Analytics for the analysis of a case study of a website from an ecommerce IT retailer based in Belgium, working in a B2B environment. This research extensively covers the main indicators available, individually assessing each report’s contribution for the comprehension of business evolution. In addition, we start by defining the ambit of application, the technologies used, as well as the main concepts associated with this kind of tools. Moreover, we also look into the integration of web data with other software applications, for an agile visualization and treatment of the data.