There was a time when websites relied on small visitor counters at the bottom of the page to know the exact number of people visiting their website everyday but things have changed since then. From those web counters has risen a term called web analytics, which analyzes the complete activity on a website in a comprehensive manner and through an organized process. Web analytics involves collection, collation and understanding of the statistics and behaviors of internet visitors to a particular website. The entire process is the same; the only changes include the monitoring of activity on different websites like content intensive websites, ezines, e-commerce websites etc.

In e-commerce website, web analytics is used for measuring the various aspects of a website that work in-sync and towards fulfilling a specific business or organizational objective. Now these objectives could be anything related to the website like visitors buying a product, reading the forum, saving product SKU’s in their shopping cart for later or simple signing up for a monthly newsletter. But the most important aspect of web analytics is collection of relevant data. The data can be collected by a web analytics tool in two different ways:

Through the log files that contain information of all the activity on the website and is normally stored on the server. The log files store different degree and type of information like how many visitors came to the website, how many people returned to the website in a single day or week, which website pages were viewed the most number of times, the time in which there was maximum visitor activity, etc.

The second method is called page tagging and it is a more complex process as compared to the previous one. To enable page tagging, you will need to insert a code in JavaScript on each of the website pages that you intend to track. When you insert the code or script, it will send all the analytics or information or data to the server handling analytics and more often than not place a cookie on the user computer.

Now both these methods can effectively measure web analytics for a particular website although the page tagging method is considered to be more accurate. This is also the starting point to understanding consumer and online visitor behavior, which is a far more complex aspect but one that can make or break an online business!

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Over the last couple of years, the internet has evolved and opened some new avenues for online businesses ensuring that both large and start-up companies can co-exist. The potential to earn online for new businesses has also increased multi-fold in the recent times. The result is competition and the one factor that will keep you ahead of the completion is internet marketing. Internet marketing consists of several key elements, each of which is responsible for driving targeted traffic, increasing brand visibility, and pushing forward the overall growth of your business.

Now you would probably ask the question: how significant is internet marketing to online business growth? In reality, the significance of internet marketing varies from one business, product or service to another. Let us look at some examples: EasyJet is a European Airline that is popular for their low cost tickets and they have actually seen a 90% sale of tickets online. Even a mega-corporate brand like Cisco has been able to earn 90% of their revenue online.

Most of the industries like IT, Telecom, Web Design, real estate, non-government organizations, pets, pet supplies, event tickets etc can be bought online. This has been made possible due to the higher reach of internet. This is also the reason why you can sit in California and sell your products or services in Tokyo. But again the fact of the matter is that your website and brand needs to be visible enough and should be able to reach out to your target audience. And this is where internet marketing plays a significant role.

Internet marketing comprises of two main segments:

1. Several specialist marketing functions: These functions apply to certain businesses
2. Philosophy or concept: This is applicable to all businesses

Within the above segments lie different strategies and tools with the help of which you will be able to market your brand over the internet and reach out to your target audiences irrespective of the geographical boundaries. There are eight top internet marketing options that you can use as a standalone strategy or in an effective configuration of some or all. These are:

1. Search Engine Optimization
2. Paid Advertising
3. Viral Strategy
4. Linking Strategy
5. Public Relations
6. E-Mail Publishing
7. Traditional Media
8. Networking

We will discuss these and many more fundamentals of Internet marketing as well as understand their pros and cons as we progress… so keep reading!

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