What is Clickstream? Understand Its Importance for SEO

A clickstream is a technique commonly used to determine the behavior of visitors to a website.

This analysis is not too complicated but has a significant influence on the development of the entire business.

The stream can be said as a path a visitor takes while browsing a website.

This technique is divided into two parts: clickstream data and analysis.

The data collected from this technique relates to visitors while they are browsing through websites or web browsers.

Meanwhile, analysis is the process of tracking, analyzing, and reporting data on pages visited by visitors and visitor behavior when browsing the website.

To find out more about it, you can read our article below.

What is Clickstream?

A clickstream is a path that visitors take when they are on a website.

It can be likened to a map pointer. Within the map, it contains details of the "paths visited by users", and the places they visited and clicked.

By monitoring this pointer map, you will get comprehensive information regarding visitor behavior while on your website.

As we've mentioned before, this technique is divided into two parts: data and analysis. The data collected relates to visitors when browsing through the website or via a web browser.

By obtaining this data, you can begin to understand the patterns that are usually followed by your website visitors.

Analysis is the process of tracking, analyzing, and reporting data on pages visited by visitors and visitor behavior when browsing the website.

When you have successfully collected existing data, it means that the analysis can be carried out. That way, you will get valuable insights about your website.

The Importance of Using Clickstream

In the world of digital marketing, this technique is usually used to determine market research strategies on a broad scale.

It is used to find out what makes consumers take or leave an offer.

The reason is that using this analysis can help marketers know customer trends, increase conversions, and understand user behavior.

Information That Can be Obtained from Clickstream

It will be very helpful if you can understand the business information obtained through this technique. By collecting them, you will gain insight into the flow and behavior of your visitors.

• First, you will find out the terms or keywords used by users to display your page in search engines.
• Second, you can find out which page the user opened first.
• Third, where they click on the page.
• Fourth, how long users stay on your page.
• Fifth, where do they go to open the next page?
• Sixth, in the world of digital marketing, data gained from this technique can be used to determine the amount of traffic coming from banners and campaigns. Such data provides information about which ads are most effective and helps optimize consumer conversion rates.

The data obtained can also show the most effective time for the performance of the marketing strategy set.

Benefits of Clickstream Data

Here are the benefits of data obtained from the "click path" technique that you need to know:

1. Offer Timely Insights

This data records the natural behavior of users on your page, so you can collect data in real time. So, there is no waiting time because your data is immediately available.

2. More Flexible

Preparing the data and developing algorithms to analyze it is very complicated.

As soon as the dataset has been prepared, they can get untold insights.

This can also limit the amount of work involved in the collection and analysis process, as used in more traditional methods.

3. Offer Comprehensive Data

The more traditional method focuses on very specific outputs. Often only focusing on the target audience, geography, and time frame.

Meanwhile, it naturally describes the various types of visitors and their navigation while on the website.

So this allows you to take a more comprehensive picture of the data and generate insights that are more dynamic, clear, and easy to implement.

Using Clickstream Analysis

This type of analysis is an approach to examining how a user interacts with web pages that depends on the tracking of clicks made by the user.

This analysis shows the flow of visitors as they explore a site.

Such information can be used in a number of different ways to improve the user experience.

That way, businesses can develop campaigns and analyze the productivity of workplaces and similar environments.

Oftentimes, the analysis is affected by several influencing factors, such as session or user analysis, to compare how different users interact with the same website.

User analysis, such as gender (if pertinent data is available), allows webmasters to see how their content appears attractive to different visitors.

The analysis session is looking at how users got to the website, making it possible for webmasters to compare their traffic sources. 

How to Do Clickstream Analysis

Because the data used is usually in very large amounts, or what is commonly called big data, many of them depend on big data analysis.

Meanwhile, tools such as Hadoop can help interpret data and produce reports on areas that are considered to be of particular interest.

Here are four steps you can take for an easy analysis process: 

1. Know Your Objectives

Knowing the goals you want to achieve is the first thing that must be done so that the analysis can be effective.

Examples of objectives that can be used are such things as compiling a marketing strategy, reviewing traffic channels, and others.

2. Collect and Visualize Data

The data collection process can be carried out using relevant sources, for example, Google Analytics, by displaying the "Behavior" and "Behavior Flow" menus, which display the sequence of pages visited by users of your site.

Visualization is usually done using data collection tools. The purpose of visualization is to facilitate understanding of the data.

3. Understand Patterns and Exceptions

Take note of any salient patterns visitors make while on your page. This pattern can be found when you are collecting and analyzing your data.

4. Draw Conclusions

The final step of this analysis is to draw conclusions from the analysis of the data that has been collected. With these conclusions, you can see which aspects still need improvement and development.

That was all we can discuss about clickstream. Its optimal use will help many marketing and web development teams understand customer difficulties in reaching information, content, products, and services.

Use SEO services from cmlabs to help you monitor website performance. With this, you can improve your website marketing strategy using organic digital marketing methods.