Is a hard to define term, being used quite liberally by those who work in the world of Internet marketing, the concept makes no sense to a layman.

So let's look at an official definition of this term. So as to understand what exactly does this concept embody?

Web Analytics Association better known as WAA, is an organisation that defines industry standards for the web analytics field. As per this organisation 'Web Analytics' is defined as:

Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.

Now that we know the definition let's look at what really is web analytics, is it merely a 'cool term' used to cloak the boring world of Web statistics, or is there more to this term?

Quite commonly Web Analytics gets confused with Web Site Statistics; but it is not so. There exists strong distinction between the two.

 Web site Statistics is just what it states, it merely gathers the factual data for your website, and presets to you in a statistical format.

Whereas Web Analytics takes this data a step ahead and works by analysing the statistical data to present meaningful results and conclusion to you regarding your website.

In I state a factual figure that 240 visitors visit your website, of them 150 leave from homepage, 20 from page No 2, 30 from Page No 3 & So on. What information did you get out of this, mere figures, which do not provide any underlying meaning. As a website owner, you will be more interested in knowing as to why are 150 of your visitors leaving from homepage itself... or why are your visitors leaving at all.. The numbers by themselves are useless.

Web Analytics will solve this problem for you, it will take up these numbers, and analyse them using different statistical and analytical tools. Final result will be a trend line of your visitors, a flowchart of the pattern followed by your visitors etc. The same number which held no meaning by themselves, now make sense. They embody certain trends and behaviour patterns.

This is what web analytics is all about, it's about delving deeper into the data, looking beyond the superficial and finding out the lines that interlinks them. Analytics is about connecting the dots until a recognisable pattern emerges and then presenting it to you.

Web Analytics works on answering the why of things. It focuses on explaining to you, the cause behind the numbers and the bringing forth the hidden pattern they form.

No we are not denying the overlap, after all statistics forms the base of Analytics; however, while statistics is a part of the jigsaw puzzle, analytics is the whole jigsaw puzzle itself.