How to Use Analytics for Website Analysis and Testing

Web analytics is mainly used to get insights about a website. However, it can also be used as a major tool for Website Analysis and to perform website testing.

Software testing companies are in search of new ways to increase the testing time. And above all testing is nowadays moving away from water fall model to feedback oriented continuous testing method.
And moreover, test environments is getting complex owing to surplus of devices.
To overcome this issue, web analytics can serve as a major tool. Since the main purpose behind the tool is to increase customer/user experience.
Essential Data Provided By Analytics
If you are a beginner and new to the world of analytics, here are the four metrics which you’ll have to keep it in your mind.

• Total Traffic: This term can be self-explanatory. Obviously, it is the total number of people that visit your site in the given period of time. The traffic that your website reaches can indicate whether you are doing things right or wrong. Also, there are various other things which you can use to scale up your traffic such as by amplifying your business strategies or posting it on your blog.

• Source of Traffic: People can arrive via bike, car, buses or another transportation mode to their destination. Similarly, users can reach to your website through various social media sites, Google searches, referral links, blogs or various other modes. Analytics will help you to figure out on how these users are finding their way to your website so that you can bring more users through various strategies.

• Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the total percentage of the visitors who leave before even checking another page on your website. Higher the bounce rate of your website, the worst your online services are. This may happen because the users may not like the content or images, find any inappropriate content or annoying sounds which drive them away from your website.
• Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is the fulfillment of the purpose that your website offers. The users not just simply bounce off but they actually buy your products and services. Higher the conversion rate, better the services you are offering.

How Analytics Can Help In Website Testing?     
Use Analytics Tools Such As Google Analytics
There are numerous analytics tools available now. You can use these tools to gather information about products to perform regression testing and to validate it against assumptions and concerns.

For instance, analytics will give a detailed vivid view about the types of devices are customers using to access a website.
Important information for website testing that you avail from the analytics is the demographical report.
Information such as from where, what kind of network, how often users are switching to new devices and OS’s will serve as valuable data for testing.
A/B Testing
A/B Testing is essential for any ecommerce website to make possible improvement that can result in the success of it.
How analytics come into the picture is rather straight-forward. Two pages must be created and the traffic must be diverted to these pages. The page which causes more conversion can be set as a standard for further design and content development.
Kapitall who develops online investment platform tried the same method and resulted in an increase 44% conversion that usual.
Calculate Impact, Risk And The Amount Of Testing Needs To Be Done
The most important aspect of analytics is its ability to integrate with other software.
Websites can leverage this situation and can get insights about the high risk area in a website, most used feature, favorite browser, high impact areas etc.
This secondary addition can also give suggestion on how much testing that needs to be done on our website.
Understand How The User Behaves
Data from user engagement can be used to determine which pages are causing trouble and what sort of testing has to be done to rectify the issue.
Processes Associated With Web Analytics Testing
To calculate the user behavior and its connection with the site, the following are the processes which are involved in the analysis of web data.

• Start with an effective description of your business and convey your products and services.
• You need to ensure to set up key arrangements which can be used to track objective accomplishment.
• You need to collect complete data with precision.
• Analyze collected data to extract bits of information.
• Make arrangements of tests procedure for data analysis.
• Draw every bit of information through the web analytics testing process.

Challenges in Web Analytics Testing
Some common challenges which are faced in web analytics testing.

• The biggest challenge is that it is manual. You need to keep on collecting data and keep on analyzing it every time manually.
• The cycle keeps on going on and as a result, you are going to end up missing something. You might not be able to cover up all the aspects of testing for these types of events in a repeatable
• Manual testing for the collected data becomes even more challenging on mobile apps as the mobile application do not send requests immediately to the analytics server.

To overcome these challenges, web analytics testing can be automated using automation tools.
Importance of Web Analytics Testing
The importance of web analytics testing is much more than normal testing. This technique will assist you to see how your visitors are linked to your website.
Similarly, Google also uses this data to rank your website up in Google search with the help of an algorithm.
Using various methods of web analytics testing can enhance the performance of your campaign too. Therefore, to increase the conversion rate you can use two methods of testing which are:

• Web Analytics A/B Testing: Web analytics A/B testing is the process of testing two web elements to find out which performs better. You can easily compare two web pages A & B with 50% of visitors each and then see which one gives the better conversion rate. A/B testing can be easily carried out with any call-to-action buttons, landing pages, emails subject lines, logos or any other communication element you can think of.

• Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework: Using selenium tool web analytics testing can be easily automated to test iOS and Android applications. Usually, WAAT using selenium tool is mainly to perform web analytics tests on mobile applications.

Also Read : Big Data Testing : What You Need To Know