Points to consider when choosing analytics tools for SharePoint websites
Microsoft SharePoint is one of the most popular document management solutions used by thousands of businesses to share information between customers and employees. As a marketer, you need to be aware of the fact that you need to find the patterns in the data so that you can avoid risks and find new business opportunities. Being able to identify business challenges and anomalies and the causes behind them can make or even break an organization. If you don’t have advanced statistical data at hand, it can be difficult to understand what users really need. To do this, you can use web analytics to generate reports for your SharePoint development environment.
SharePoint solutions are customizable, and custom applications can be easily built on top of out-of-the-box tools. Using analytics tools helps SharePoint websites analyze the pattern and information that helps attract the attention of users. It helps to track the interaction of users from various locations and uses different devices to access any information on the site.
Google Analytics is a popular marketing analytics tool, but with years of integration, the product has become more focused on advertiser-specific features like remarketing, display network, attribution, etc. With default SharePoint site analytics, it’s hard to track user click paths, segment users, and do the things web analytics normally does. So if you’re willing to integrate analytics into your SharePoint website, here are some things to consider when looking for the best analytics.
Regular web analytics or dedicated SharePoint solution:
You may consider using a regular web analytics solution as they are much cheaper and easier to use. But, when it comes to intranet analytics, this may not be the best solution. While you can configure your regular web analytics tool to fit your SharePoint website, you also need to remember that your intranet space isn’t just about selling your products. Standard web analytics metrics will not apply to the SharePoint environment. Using a dedicated solution will help you track a wide range of actions and areas that will reveal how active your users are, such as visitor profiles, user activities, site search, goals, etc.
The version of SharePoint you are using:
This is very important and should be kept in mind as no single solution fits all editions of SharePoint. Some of the native intranet analytics tools only support the latest version of SharePoint, while others can only work with older ones. SharePoint 2013 and 2016 and Office 365 are application-based solutions, while SharePoint 2010 uses a high-performance farm solution.wsp. SharePoint analytics solution that is dedicated to working around this usage and is designed for the needs of the intranet software release.
JS Trace vs. Log Parsing:
SharePoint analytics tools often vary in many ways and one method is used to collect visitor data. JavaScript is popular, simple, and effective. Javascript tagging is also the most accurate, customizable and comprehensive tracking method available and has become the go-to solution for everyone who wants to analyze and collect as much data as possible. But JS tracking isn’t right for everyone, as some entities may have to use less advanced tracking methods to comply with strict security regulations and other industry-based restrictions. This can easily be changed by web logs, which also has some serious drawbacks. But it is possible to enrich web logs with additional information about users and not capture any data that falls within the definition of PII.
