Web Analysis of Argos Retailers - Case Study Example

Executive summary Presently, thousands of firms now own websites, which have become part of the business. Additionally, the firms have adopted many technologies which are accessible via the web like online services. The level of development in the modern world has greatly improved especially with the increased rate of innovation and growing technology. As part of information technology in the modern world, the Internet has contributed a lot to the society at large. Internet services have enabled electronic commerce (e-commerce), whereby both consumers and sellers can transact businesses electronically through the internet. With easy accessibility of web information because of many available web developers and designers, a company can easily improve its user interfaces, search engines, design or look of the site and navigation features through web analytics (Cookies & Google Analytics, 2010). This will improve the company site and click stream, and how to improve the website's success, performance and business decision making, and have happier customers. This study review аnd рrороsе а соursе оf асtiоn fоr а lаrgе оnlinе rеtаilеr, Argos Retailer UK through web analytics. One of the trendiest ways that companies have employed to gather data and information concerning their websites is through web analytic. The review of Argos will entails an overview of the company website – www.argos.co.uk, by highlighting where and what web analytics techniques and tools can be used to improve the site use. Some of the techniques or tools that will be used comprises of browser type, page views, hits, click streams and traffic patterns. The tools supports the correct usage and operation of the websites, as they may help spot pages with error and helps in spotting a consumers trends like traffic growth within a specified period of time. Connection speed, screen size, visitors’ type among others may help to gauge website’s success performance and business decision making for business success. Introduction Web analysis entails the assessment, gathering, analysis and reporting with intent of comprehending and maximizing the web usage. Web analytics is not merely the tool of quantifying the web traffic but is employed as a tool for business and market research, and to evaluate and improve the usefulness of a particular web site. This analysis will reflect on the review of Argos Retailer in UK, whose website is www.argos.co.uk. The Retail Company is one of the UK’s leading general store for both the merchandise and retail goods. As such, this study will replicate the way Argos Retailer UK align its operation online and a discussion about how it's business intelligence can be connected to the provision of web analytics data, based on academic theory (Argos Company, 2013). According to Eugenia and Huang (2012), online shopping unlike store shopping, offers consumers with a variety of choices to choose from, making it convenient to purchase a property at affordable costs after viewing the property graphics on the internet. The widespread information on products is availed online and buyers can browse it on their PC or laptop computers while at home or in the office. Online shopping has been growing swiftly in different countries in the past ten years but still represent a small portion of general retailing. Nevertheless, e-commerce is deemed at the moment to grow rapidly because of the changing consumer shopping habits as well as the advances in retail technology. The impact of online shopping to retail goods will be massive and across-the-board in the entire retail industry. Internet technology has poised new set of challenges and opportunities in the retail property business which has send retailers and investors to the drawing board on how to adopt and transform retail industry models by improving on their websites and visibility of products online (Cookies & Google Analytics, 2010). The changes need also to encompass consumer behavior and see how they will tackle it. Mobile business and transaction is destined to greater heights, with immense and invasive impacts transversely in the retail commerce. Overview of the site The Argos website is a multichannel purchase experience, where customers have a variety of product choice to buy from, ranging from technology, home and garden, baby and nursery, toys, sport and leisure, health and beauty, clothing, jewellery and watches to gifts. The website is operated by Argos Limited, a company incorporated in England with incorporation number 01081551 with head office at Avebury Boulevard (Argos Company, 2013). The site has privacy policy stipulated in terms and conditions, where data from the registered client can be used. Any person below the age of 18 years old is barred from using the website unless a he/she submit a written consent from guardian to input their personal data on the site. This site make use of cookies that are text files which enclose little amount of information that a website may send to, as well as store on your desktop or devise through a browser. A registered client on the site can peruse through the site to check on his or her personal data and edit it where necessary (Cookies & Google Analytics, 2010). The appearance of the site is appealing and this always attracts visitors who access the site and click per stream is very fast. The internet has brought a u-turn in the business world, and continued to be popular in the minds of many consumers and business people. The Argos Company’s perspective is that internet has simplified the operation of business making it runs (Argos Company, 2013). Internet too, has revolutionized its marketing of products, for example, firms can now advertise their goods and services on social sites and other websites that have high number of visitors. Besides easing the operation of retail business, it has also lowered the related costs. Ease in marketing makes possible to enter new markets by gathering relevant information online for targeted markets. However, there have some interference for overseas business via the internet, some have been worked out whereas others are still pending, and such issues include currency exchange rates, taxes on products and tariffs. In spite of such issues, the benefits of e-commerce surpass the disadvantages. Web analytics techniques and tools There are several tools and techniques that are used in web analytics that collect and internet data from the website, which comprises of tracker, landing pages, cookies, privacy policy, heat maps, performance indicator, click stream and session replay. Through web analytics, it is easy to track online visitors and their activities, thus able to understand their behaviour and improve performance and decision making process. Page views, hits, click streams and traffic patterns. The tools supports the correct usage and operation of the websites, as they may help spot pages with error and helps in spotting a consumers trends like traffic growth within a specified period of time (Eugenia and Huang, 2012). The consumer behaviour reflects the totality of consumer’s decisions and expectations with respect to the acquisition and use of products, activities and ideas by human decision-making units. Perhaps, the main tricky model in the tracking online activities is how to tackle buying behaviour of potential clients. Consumer behaviour of online buyers is affected by a variety of variable that ranges from individual motivations and mind-set on products. The consumers’ tastes and preferences will mostly determine the buying behaviour. The present Argos website offers a better choice and ambience of the site which influence behaviour and decision making of most clients and visitors. The Argo Retailer UK provides cookies that are text files with small amount of information that makes the search engine very light for easy access and storage on computer or browser. Mostly, cookies are used to offer easy access of customized information from the website by making the site more friendly to majority of users, for example remembering the postcode for the client so that he/she do not re-enter it every time the client checks on stocks or choice of availed products on the store or one may be interested to purchase. Also, cookies permit the client to comprehend who viewed which pages and advertisements, to establish how regularly for particular pages are visited and to find out the most popular areas of the site (Cookies & Google Analytics, 2010). The Argos website seek the client’s site and to obtain the consent to use the cookies through cookies policy. In case one does not agree to company’s privacy and cookie policies by using the Argos website, Apps and mobile website he or she visits the “Managing Your Cookies” part of further details of changing the settings. Rationale used to understand visitors' behaviour A number of rationales are used to understand visitor’s behaviour, which include web site visitor, hits, page view, visit or session, conversion rate, exit rate and bounce rate among others. Web site visitor is an activity data rationale that helps to measure customer behaviour through a click stream. It captures what the visitor undertook while visiting the site and comprehends the visitor profile information. Hits and page view can tell what the visitor got appealing on the site by assessing the number of times it was done (Cookies & Google Analytics, 2010). The performance indicators of a website will to some extend tell the consumer behaviour of particular customers. The fundamental performance indicators for a particular sales appeal to clients of any website are the Bounce Rate along with the Conversion Rate. The bounce rate will help show visitors from the Google Ads and those from other sources. A site with an average bounce rate of 42-44 percent of Google Ads is termed to be suitable for customers, while that of visitors from other sites should range between 35-38 percent. A bounce rate of Argos website is said to be 43% of which means that the site have to overall problem with bounce rates, however there might be specific to a particular market segments. Concerning the conversion rate, the average for flouring business should be above 1.5 percent. However, a site with a proper evaluation for improvement and management, like this site of Argos is supposed to attain a conversion rate of more than 2%, but it has a conversion rate of 0.8% (Eugenia and Huang, 2012). This conversion rate is very low for a largest merchandise for a market like UK and globally, but the problem is not that the site is not being visited by the clients; the problem could be they may be in position to buy once they check on the products. Improve the website's success, performance and business decision making The suggestion for improvement on site performance and decision making, the use of the site could be pivotal. A collection of views from previous users of Argos site indicate that the website has a variety of product choice but fewer descriptions. To win the heart of many online buyers, the site should offer adequate product description to shoppers, as many fear buying blindly over the web hence need to a real detailed view of what they are buying (Eugenia and Huang, 2013). The site also has only one view for pictures, it needs to improve on the information of the product and the pictures of products posted should be taken from different angles. At the moment, with scanty information on the site, they may lose a substantial number of businesses from potential buyers to their competitors. The “Buy or Reserve” request push button is positioned within the background of almost the same colour and located in the left side of site page. Above this button is a key that permits clients to check on the existence of more products on the site with buttons allowing for reservations and home delivery option closely together. Thus, why may have an option to a product and be delivered at home or collect it on the store, but proceeding to “My Trolley” the payment is only accepted to those who want to it delivered at home, but for collection at the store, one should do payment at the store. This seem inconvenience to many customers who have tight schedule as it may be hard for them to come and line up for payment at the store while they did an online purchase or most of those who use online payment means, again will be forced to withdraw the cash from the bank, which may take like again 3 days yet they wanted quick access to the product use. The issue of privacy is very important, as customers pay visit the site but because of a category of risk that online consumers face is psychological risk, for instance disillusionment and nuisance of doing their shopping via internet, which is mostly ignited by the privacy information gone astray, they may fail to take order or buy. Through the internet, the privacy information may be tracked and gathered easily by hackers, through the provision of spam mails. However, the Federal Trade Commission forbid the web owners to seize customer’s information through “unjust and illusory” business practices, but still it could be hard to completely monitor every activity of online businesses to spot cases of fraud or unfair dealings. Since there are insufficient legal remedies to curb online malpractices, online retailers like Argos Company must be alert regarding privacy risk which could be a hindrance to their online shopping (Eugenia and Huang, 2013). Furthermore, they should be made aware on the kind of information that should be exposed online. Argos's business intelligence link to its web analytics data Based on the web analytics data, Argos web designers and management have used collected business intelligence to link itself to a clear visual impression for viewers of products online. The data has helped to improve the navigation, as view of all pages is clear and lightweight because of controlled cookies and thus load very quickly, saving on customers’ time (Eugenia and Huang, 2012). The improvement on navigation systems at the site is clear for normal user, which is commendable for practical use of web analytics data, however some windows of products opens in new windows which to many online users is not a good practice because of security and privacy of the users. The so called modern firms or “dot-com” firms conduct their businesses wholly via the internet some have no stores or outlets (Cookies & Google Analytics, 2010). The technological changes in retail sector have forced the traditional retailers to embrace the online shopping by selling some of their products via the internet besides their brick-and-mortar structures or stalls. Conclusion and Recommendation Nowadays, there are numerous commercial and freeware software that companies can use along with web analytics to package their products and gather business intelligence regarding their products online. They may use page views, hits, click streams and traffic patterns. The tools supports the correct usage and operation of the websites, as they may help spot pages with error and helps in spotting a consumers trends like traffic growth within a specified period of time. The company should install web analytics to all its documents, for easy evaluation of the customer buying behaviour. It can consider using the free analytics services that are availed by the Google Analytics (Eugenia and Huang, 2013). It should incorporate other web beacons or third party cookies to create a “one stop shop” for its clients, but should come from trusted parties. Consumer behaviour is affected by a lot of variables. The combinations of these variables produce a different impact on each one of them as exhibited in their different behaviour as consumers. Web analytics for Argos Company will thus be very paramount in gauging the behaviour of a particular product segment online (Eugenia and Huang, 2012). To apply legal and ethical issues, Argos Company must actually practice by safeguarding customer’s privacy to third parties, refraining from making excessive use of personal information and related regulations in the process. Transparency is often the basis of business ethics - companies that want to be moral and ethical must also necessarily be upfront about their actions and business strategies and should also be emphasized when it comes to employee development. References Argos Company (2013). 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