case study for web analytics

Top 20 Analytics Case Studies in 2024

Cem is the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per Similarweb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month.

Cem's work focuses on how enterprises can leverage new technologies in AI, automation, cybersecurity(including network security, application security), data collection including web data collection and process intelligence.

Although the potential of Big Data and business intelligence are recognized by organizations, Gartner analyst Nick Heudecker says that the failure rate of analytics projects is close to 85%. Uncovering the power of analytics improves business operations, reduces costs, enhances decision-making , and enables the launching of more personalized products.

In this article, our research covers:

How to measure analytics success?

What are some analytics case studies.

According to  Gartner CDO Survey,  the top 3 critical success factors of analytics projects are:

• Creation of a data-driven culture within the organization,
• Data integration and data skills training across the organization,
• And implementation of a data management and analytics strategy.

The success of the process of analytics depends on asking the right question. It requires an understanding of the appropriate data required for each goal to be achieved. We’ve listed 20 successful analytics applications/case studies from different industries.

During our research, we examined that partnering with an analytics consultant helps organizations boost their success if organizations’ tech team lacks certain data skills.

*Vendors have not shared the client name

For more on analytics

If your organization is willing to implement an analytics solution but doesn’t know where to start, here are some of the articles we’ve written before that can help you learn more:

• AI in analytics: How AI is shaping analytics
• Edge Analytics in 2022: What it is, Why it matters & Use Cases
• Application Analytics: Tracking KPIs that lead to success

Finally, if you believe that your business would benefit from adopting an analytics solution, we have data-driven lists of vendors on our analytics hub and analytics platforms

We will help you choose the best solution tailored to your needs:

Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and media that referenced AIMultiple.

Cem's hands-on enterprise software experience contributes to the insights that he generates. He oversees AIMultiple benchmarks in dynamic application security testing (DAST), data loss prevention (DLP), email marketing and web data collection. Other AIMultiple industry analysts and tech team support Cem in designing, running and evaluating benchmarks.

Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.

He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.

Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

AIMultiple.com Traffic Analytics, Ranking & Audience , Similarweb. Why Microsoft, IBM, and Google Are Ramping up Efforts on AI Ethics , Business Insider. Microsoft invests $1 billion in OpenAI to pursue artificial intelligence that’s smarter than we are , Washington Post. Data management barriers to AI success , Deloitte. Empowering AI Leadership: AI C-Suite Toolkit , World Economic Forum. Science, Research and Innovation Performance of the EU , European Commission. Public-sector digitization: The trillion-dollar challenge , McKinsey & Company. Hypatos gets $11.8M for a deep learning approach to document processing , TechCrunch. We got an exclusive look at the pitch deck AI startup Hypatos used to raise $11 million , Business Insider.

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2,473 views, a complete guide to web analytics | with real-life examples.

Introduction

If you’re looking to start or expand your online business, understanding web analytics can be a valuable tool.

You can learn a lot about your website’s visitors from web analytics, including how they spend time on your website and what their preferences are. By tracking metrics like page visits, unique visitors, bounce rate, and conversion rate, you can optimize your website design, content strategy, and marketing efforts.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key metrics and tools of web analytics and show you how to use them effectively. We’ll also explore real-world examples of businesses that used web analytics to solve business problems and drive growth.

Whether you’re a newbie business owner or looking to scale up your online business, this guide addresses all you need to know about web analytics. Let’s dive in.

What are web analytics, and why do they matter?

Web analytics involve collecting, examining, analyzing, and displaying information on website visitors and their behavior. This helps website owners understand how users interact with their website and what could be tweaked to improve user experience.

Let’s suppose you own a website that sells scented candles. By using web analytics, you can learn about things like:

• The number of visitors on your website
• The locations they’re coming from (country, state, or city)
• The pages they keep returning to
• The time they spend on each page
• The way they engage with your pages (for example, whether they put something in their shopping cart or leave your site when they face an image-heavy page that’s taking longer to load)
• Whether or not they end up making a purchase

This information could help you in many ways. For example:

• If a slow-loading page turns buyers away, you could redesign it to improve site speed.
• Creating a festival-specific collection showcasing candles related to the festival.
• Displaying pop-ups or notifications with offers on festival-themed scented candles based on your visitors’ behavior and interests. Suppose many people are leaving without buying anything right at the checkout stage. In that case, you might need to streamline the checkout process or add more payment options to encourage buyers.

Web analytics are crucial processes that help online business owners understand user behaviors on their websites. With the help of this information, website owners can improve their site designs, offer a better user experience, and grow their businesses.

Important metrics of web analytics

First, let’s understand some key metrics that web analytics help measure.

Page visits (sessions) and page views

Page visits track the traffic to a website within a given time frame. Page visits, also known as sessions, measure how many times a user visited your website, including all pageviews and interactions within a specific period. A session starts when visitors enter your website and ends when they leave or become inactive after a specified time. A high number of page visits from disinterested buyers might not be helpful. In contrast, fewer visits from high-intent buyers can indicate the page’s effectiveness in driving conversions.

Page views are the number of views a webpage gets (or the number of times it loads or reloads) over a given period.

Let’s see how these two are different.

Imagine a visitor coming to a website and viewing five different pages during their visit. This would count as one page visit (or session) but five page views.

Also, page visits occur when visitors land on a webpage from an external source (like a search engine). But page views occur when a single user loads or reloads a webpage, regardless of whether they came from an external source or were already on your website.

Unique visitors

Unique visitors are those who have visited a website during a given time, regardless of how many times they’ve visited. Page views track the total number of views which might include repeat visits by the same person. Unique visitors metric shows the actual number of visitors to the website.

Let’s say there is a website called “Something.com,” and we want to analyze its visitor data.

During the month of April 2023, Something.com had 10,000 unique visitors and 30,000 page views.

This means that there were 10,000 unique individuals who visited Something.com at least once during April 2023. It doesn’t matter if they visited the website multiple times, they are counted as a unique visitor only once.

On the other hand, the total number of page views is 30,000. This includes all the visits to the website, whether they are by unique visitors or repeat visits by the same person. So, if someone visited Something.com eleven times during April 2023, it would contribute eleven page views to the total count.

A session measures a user’s time on a website, starting when they first land on it and ending when they leave or become inactive for a specified period (usually 30 minutes). Users may view multiple pages during a session, take various actions, or engage with different website elements. The number of sessions can be a valuable metric for understanding how visitors interact with a website over time.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate gives the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one webpage and taking no further action.

Time on page

Time on page indicates how long a user spends on a specific website before moving to another page or leaving the site. You can measure it by deducting the time when the user first accessed the page from when they navigated to another page or closed the website.

Click-through rate (CTR)

CTR calculates the percentage of users who click on a call-to-action (CTA) link compared to the total number who view a page, email, or advertisement. This tells you how engaging or effective your marketing campaign is.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate calculated the percentage of users who take a specific action or complete a desired goal, such as purchasing something, downloading an eBook, or subscribing to an email newsletter. For example, if a website had 2,000 visitors and 500 made a purchase, the conversion rate would be 25%.

Exit rate denotes the percentage of visitors who leave a website or web page after viewing it. This differs from bounce rate, which considers only those who leave a website after viewing just one page. Exit rate considers all pages a user may have viewed before leaving.

Exit rate is a helpful metric for identifying potential problem areas on a website, such as pages that may be causing users to lose interest or become frustrated.

Remember, pages like the checkout page will naturally have high exit rates. So a high exit rate isn’t always problematic unless it’s happening on a landing page or a product page.

Traffic sources

Traffic sources are the channels through which users find and access your website, such as social media platforms, search engine result pages, and more.

For example, if you’re running an email marketing campaign, the CTA can direct users to a specific page on your website where you want them to take action, such as purchasing a product or downloading a white paper.

If your visitors are referral traffic, they might first land on an article or blog post on your site whose link was shared by another website.

Return on investment (ROI)

ROI is a financial measurement of the profitability of your website, which compares the cost of running your website or marketing campaigns to the revenue generated.

WebEngage’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) helps you track all of these key metrics across different sources, such as websites, mobile apps, and data warehouses, in one place. This way, you can obtain a complete and unified view of your customers. The insights you gain from this help you to build more personalized and targeted campaigns.

What kind of problems do web analytics help solve?

Here are some ways in which web analytics can boost your business growth. The accompanying impact stories show how they can be put into practice.

User behavior tracking

Web analytics help track your visitors and provide insights about their behavior. Suppose a user visits a website and clicks on a product page. Web analytics tools monitor how users interact with the product page, including metrics like the length of time they spend on the page, whether they added the product to their shopping cart, and if they ultimately made a purchase.

The software also tracks the user’s behavior on other pages, such as the homepage and checkout page.

The user’s behavior data is aggregated and analyzed to understand patterns like which products are popular, what pages have high bounce rates, and where users tend to drop off in the checkout process. This information can help you tailor your website for a better user experience and higher conversion rates. According to Forrester , companies that make data-driven website changes are three times more likely to improve customer experience (CX) than companies that don’t consider data analytics.

Let’s see this in action.

TravelTriangle , India’s biggest OTA marketplace, wanted to investigate why people visited their web pages or mobile app but left without booking a trip. With the help of the Lead Scoring model designed by WebEngage, TravelTriangle could assign scores to its visitors. A high lead score implied high intent users. Once the user segments were defined, TravelTriangle targeted the high-intent users via hyper-personalized communication and cross-channel engagements. As a result, the drop-offs on the travel destination landing pages were reduced by 10%, and the company’s remarketing cost declined by 30%.

Website design and content strategy

You can use web analytics to identify areas for improvement in your website’s design and content. Using these insights, you can create a more user-friendly website that offers content tailored to your target audience’s preferences. This will help boost your engagement and conversions.

For example, a business might use web analytics to identify the traffic sources to its website and the most popular pages among its visitors. The company could optimize its website design and content strategy with this information to improve engagement and conversion rates.

Happilo , an Indian gourmet health food brand, faced trouble retaining its customers due to a lack of personalized and relevant website content.

Happilo deployed WebEngage’s in-line personalization tool, which helps create a customized website experience for each user based on their behavior and attributes. You don’t need any coding experience to use the in-line personalization tool.

As a result of implementing in-line personalization, Happilo could achieve a 15% growth in conversion rates through repeat purchases and a staggering 286% uplift in conversion by targeting cart abandoners.

Marketing efforts

Businesses can use web analytics to track the performance of their digital marketing and advertising campaigns and choose the best channels for reaching their target audience. Let’s see how this is done.

Scripbox , India’s leading digital wealth manager, needed help optimizing its marketing efforts to enhance acquisitions and retention. With WebEngage’s Journey Designer and analytics platform, the company could segment its customer base based on domestic and NRI residents. Then they targeted the segments with more personalized communication using WebEngage’s dashboard features like ‘ Send Intelligently ‘ and ‘ A/B testing .’ WebEngage’s web analytics tools also empowered Scripbox to measure and rank its marketing campaigns’ efforts and optimize the most effective ones.

As a result, the company witnessed a 3X growth in user engagement , a 25-30% growth in email open rates, and frequency capping in marketing campaigns leading to a 25% decrease in unsubscribe rate.

How to leverage Web Analytics to create high-impact strategies that drive business growth?

Define goals and objectives.

To use web analytics insights effectively, you must first define the goals you’re trying to achieve. For that, you first need to determine your overall business objectives. Are you trying to boost sales or improve engagement? Identifying your goals will help you focus your efforts and ensure that you’re tracking the right metrics.

Make the goals as precise as possible. So instead of setting a goal like increasing web traffic, set an objective like ‘increasing website traffic by 20% in the next four months.’ All your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Track the right metrics

Once you’ve identified your objectives, it’s time to determine the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help measure the progress toward your goals. Let’s assume you want to boost sales. In that case, your KPIs could be conversion rates, cart abandonment rates, and revenue per user.

Choose the right tools

Select the web analytics tools that will help you collect the data you need to measure and analyze your chosen metrics most efficiently. Analytics tools can help you track user behavior on your website, including which pages users visit, their time on a page, and their actions. Google Analytics is a popular tool with many features, but other options are also available.

WebEngage has some advanced and sophisticated analytics tools like Funnels , Paths , and Live Analytics that help you in cases like:

• Visualizing how customers are engaging with your brand
• Tailoring your sales funnel to suit customer behavior
• Getting real-time insights on your marketing campaigns
• Encouraging customers to return to your eCommerce site
• Understanding the reasons for customer drop-offs

Analyze the data

Once you’ve installed the right analytics tools and tracked your chosen metrics, you must analyze the data. Look for patterns, trends, and anomalies. Understand which areas of your website are engaging users (or causing them to leave). This knowledge can inform your content and design decisions. For example, Clovia , a leading full-stack lingerie brand in India, used WebEngage’s Funnels to analyze user behaviors and customer drop-offs on its websites and apps. A checkout funnel was created for high-intent users to observe their behavior patterns at different times.

Identify traffic sources

Understanding how users find your website is crucial for building effective marketing strategies. Analytics tools can reveal which channels (e.g., search engines, social media, email) drive traffic and which generate the most conversions.

User segmentation

Segmenting users based on demographics, behavior, or other factors can help you identify patterns and trends that might not be immediately visible when looking at aggregate data. This information can inform your targeting strategies and help you create more effective messaging and campaigns.

Use A/B testing

Analytics tools can help you test different variations of your website and marketing campaigns to identify the highest-performing versions. You can tweak your website and campaigns accordingly.

Make data-driven decisions

Based on your analysis, decide how to improve the performance of your website. Adjust your website design, content, or marketing strategies to achieve your goals.

In continuation to our last example, Clovia analyzed the data it collected. Using WebEngage’s Journey Designer, the company created a personalized multi-channel journey that encouraged customers to complete the checkout process. Using web analytics tools, Clovia determined the best time to reach out to cart abandoners. As a result, it experienced an impressive 85% growth in its overall revenue .

Continuously monitor and refine

Your job doesn’t end when you reach your goals. Keeping track of your website metrics and making tweaks to your strategy according to the insights received is an ongoing process. Over time, your business metrics will change. But one thing will remain true: you will always need to track your website’s performance and make necessary adjustments with the help of web analytics tools.

Something to keep in mind

There are certain instances, like dark social, where web analytics might not give you the most accurate insights.

Dark social refers to social sharing and online referrals that occur through private messaging platforms, email, or other non-public channels, making it difficult for marketers and analysts to track and measure. In other words, it is the sharing of content or links that take place outside of public social networks without identifying the source.

Imagine sharing a link with your friend via private messaging through WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. In these cases, the referrer information is often lost. Then when your friend clicks on a shared link and visits a website, the source of the traffic appears as “direct” instead of being attributed to the specific sharing channel.

Web analytics tools can provide some insights and help shed light on dark social to a certain extent, but they are not designed to fully capture and track it.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of dark social, you might need to employ alternative methods, such as surveys, user interviews, or social listening tools, to gather data and insights from users themselves about their sharing behaviors.

Final Thoughts

If you dream of growing your online business, there’s no doubt that web analytics are crucial. Without understanding your website traffic and user behavior, making informed decisions about optimizing your website design and marketing strategies is almost impossible. But don’t worry. You need not do everything by yourself.

WebEngage is here to help you harness the power of data-driven decision-making. Our advanced analytics features are designed to help you gain deep insights so you can make informed decisions that drive growth and boost conversions. With tools like funnels, paths, cohorts, and live analytics, you’ll have all the information you need to customize your website and marketing campaigns for maximum impact. Need more proof? Check out our Impact Stories . Our analytics’ capabilities have helped businesses like yours achieve remarkable results. We’re confident we can help you. Ready to take the leap? Head to our website to book a demo today .

• Created: 26th May, 2023
• Last Updated: 26th May, 2023
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10 Best Google Analytics Case Studies

Best Google Analytics Case Studies

Google Analytics has various products under its umbrella such as Google Analytics, Google Analytics 360, Google Tag Manager, Google Big Query etc. These products have assisted many big brands to achieve their milestones with their new and innovative approach. The power of these platforms has been beautifully captured in these best Google Analytics case studies.

1. Revenue shoot-up of Dominos

Ordering a pizza nowadays is a piece of cake, isn’t it?

Well, it is for end users. Let’s say, you are browsing your Facebook feed, you see Dominos has 1+1 offer for Wednesday. You are like whatever, I am not ordering today. Then you are watching a video on YouTube, Dominos shows its mouth-watering cheese burst pizza, you are tempted, but you still are saying no. Finally you meet your friend in the evening and decide to have dinner outside. Now the place on top of your mind is dominos and you hit the store. Well, Dominos got you!

There were multiple influencing stages in your purchase and there are millions of people out there who follow numerous stages. It is crucial for Dominos to connect and analyze users’ cross-channel & cross-device behaviour and also connect online and offline behaviour.

That’s what they did with Google analytics 360 product and partnership with DBI (Digital Business Intelligence) company. This Google Analytics case study has captured the essence of Dominos strategy.

Though Dominos has word class analytics solutions to measure their every marketing effort, these were in silos. Dominos knew there is a big ocean of opportunities available once they eradicate these silos and merge them. That’s what they did with Google Big Query. DBI developed a custom BigQuery Solution for Dominos to store and fetch massive data of Dominos. It also helped Dominos to connect their analytics and CRM data seamlessly to connect online & offline data.

The result says it all;

• Increased monthly revenue by 6%
• Reduced ad spending cost by 80% year on year

2. Donations flow in for Cancer.org

American cancer society has worked for 100 years to make the world to eradicate cancer. The company had realized the need to know how users consume their website and their purpose. This would help them to channelize their marketing efforts and reach their revenue goal.

The organization tied up with Search Discovery agency which is an authorized reseller of Google Analytics.

The first step; they created 3 types of users on their website; Information seekers, Event Participants and Donors. Next step was to understand each segments’ goals using Custom Dimensions of Google Analytics. Once the goals of each segment were known, they created a scoring system for each dimension using the custom metric to check whether they have met their goals. They also designed remarketing campaigns for these audiences and customized the content for them.

End Result: Revenue jumped by 5.4% year on year.

3. Brian Gavin Diamonds increased Customer Acquisition

Brian Gravin Diamond are Texas-based Custom diamond jewelry makers. Most of their sales come from their e-commerce website. They had a goal to improve their online sales by understanding user pre-purchase behaviour.

Along with Google Analytics, they decided to implement Google’s Enhanced Ecommerce to achieve their goal. One of the best find out was that their new line of designs has cropped up an interest in their website visitors which contributed to 6% boost in sales. They decided to launch a new line of similar inventory in the fall.

Pertaining to their cart abandonment trend, they learned that they have lost around $500K. They identified there is no proper way to bring back card abandons. They build a guest checkout flow for these users to complete the purchase.

End Result: 60% increase in checkout to the payment page.

4. Revamped Social Media Strategy of Fairmont Hotels

Fairmont is a luxury line of hotels having 60 distinctive hotels across the world. The company generates a lot buzz on social media channels especially twitter. Generating buzz is one thing and measuring the effectiveness of the buzz is other. This one of the top Google Analytics case studies explains Fairmont’s strategy.

The company decided to track the quality of traffic from Twitter. Normally traffic from third-party sites including social media is shown as a referral in analytics. So if anyone clicks a link of Fairmont on the Twitter platform, it is reflected in the referral traffic of Twitter in analytics, but if this link is copied and shared to others platforms like email, WhatsApp etc., the source would be shown as direct.

To make sure the aggregation of the source is accurate, the company decided to use URL builder, in which a link can be given parameters like source, medium, campaign name etc., which lets the company track the source of twitter traffic irrespective of where the link is clicked on.

Result: Better understanding of social media traffic.

5. 10X higher conversion rate for Marketo

Marketo is a leading marketing automation company associated with numerous B2C & B2B companies. The company had a goal to improve their conversion rate with the aid of their Real-Time Personalization product and Google Analytics.

Marketo merged the data of their website visitors’ characteristics like industry vertical, the product they are interested in etc. by sending the data to Google analytics in the form of events and the demographic and behaviour data from Google Analytics. This led to the creation of detailed audience segments based on product interest and demographic data. They created awesome remarketing campaigns in ad words and served the audience with most relevant data.

Result: Conversions improved by the rate of 10x compared to traditional display marketing.

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6. ROAS improved by 30% for Panasonic

Renowned brands have realized the power of digital marketing and so is Panasonic. Panasonic decided to integrate all their marketing data of all the websites to a single platform which is Google Analytics 360 along with the agency NRI Netcom. With this one platform to view all their marketing data, they soon got two powerful insights;

• Most of the purchases of their products happen during life-changing events like marriage, moving to a new city etc.
• The most commonly purchased combination of products

They created audience lists based on the products the users showed interest into and put this data across ad words, double-click, Google display network to remarket with the relevant content. With the insight of the popular combination of purchases, they started remarketing the other relevant products for the user in a particular segment; eg; users were marketed with speakers who previously showed interest in TV.

End Result: Improved Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) by 30%.

7. 130% increase in conversion rate for Top Tarif

Top Tarif is a price comparison website of Germany. The objective of the company was to increase conversion by maintaining the same cost per conversion. They chose to fine-tune their remarketing approach by making the lists more granular.

They built remarketing lists based on the users’ previous web usage, depth of price comparison, keywords used to reach the website, the date of last visit etc. They focused on users who would more likely convert.

Result: 130% growth in conversions and 31.5% improvement in conversion rate.

8. Top Talents flow to “Teach For America”

This is one of the best Google Analytics case studies.

Teach For America is an organization focused on providing quality education to underprivileged children of America. Their main resource is the young, educated, passionate and responsible citizens of the country. To accomplish this goal in the competitive market, they tied up with LunaMetric to leverage on the power of Google Analytics.

They created remarketing lists based on the initial information provided applicants in terms of their GDP, educational stream, career status etc. and imported the data to Google Analytics in the form of dimensions. They then advertised to these audiences on search platform when they research anything related to their stream, career etc.

Result: 57% increased conversion with audience targeting.

9. Remarketing yields 1300% ROI for Watchfinder

Watchfinder is a UK based retailer of premium pre-owned watches. Considering the fact that their average order value is more than 3,500 Euros, the company was aware of the fact that the purchase lead time would take weeks to months. Also, less than 1% of purchases happened on the first visit. There was a need for Watchfinder to convince users who showed interest in this meantime.

Watchfinder collaborated with Periscopix, a Google Analytics Premium Partner and created remarketing campaigns to do the magic. They created 20 remarketing lists based on the user location, stage in the purchase funnel and also the brand they showed interest in. They remarketed to these audiences and improved their results.

Result: 1300% ROI and 13% increase in average order value.

10. 200% transaction rates for Alfa Strakhovanie

Alfa Strakhovanie is Russia’s largest insurance company in the travel and auto sector. Their goal was to know their most valuable customers and decide how much to spend on them. The catch with insurance companies is they will know the real value of user once the policy expires without any claims. Their objective was to revise their policy pricing based on the segment of the user, eg; a person of 18-24 age with speedy cars and a new driving licensee is riskier.

The company partnered with AGIMA analytics agency. They used Enhanced E-commerce solutions and custom metrics to analyze the segment data and drive the results.

Results: Transactions rates were doubled.

These are some of the brands which are boosting their business with the aid of data provided by Google Analytics and its products. These Google Analytics case studies give a ready reckoner for beginners. One can also derive many strategies by following the ideas used in these case studies.

Remarketing is the one unmatched feature in the world of Google Analytics. Most of the case studies mentioned here have capitalized on this feature. Use it wisely to deliver the best results.

Keeping a track of the latest happenings in Digital Marketing can be daunting, learning Digital Marketing all alone unbearably troublesome. Is that what you feel too? If yes, then enroll in our Certified Digital Marketing Master Course.

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Google Analytics Performance Marketing Case Studies

When you change the way data is collected and analyzed, you gain insights into your customers and their purchase behaviors. The brands in the section below, including Westwing, Travelocity and PBS, did just that with products such as Google Analytics Premium and Universal Analytics.

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Lenovo: a radically new view of results, accuweather measures holistic analytics with google analytics premium, watchfinder clocks 1,300% roi using precision remarketing with google analytics, westwing uses universal analytics to better understand customers' purchase path, rooms to go improves the shopper experience by integrating google analytics premium.

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Web analytics: everything you need to know to improve your site’s UX

How do you know what people do when they visit your website, so you can make decisions to improve their experience and achieve your business goals?

Do you feel like you're missing out on valuable insights and opportunities because you don't understand your website user metrics and data? 

Web analytics may seem confusing at first, but when you grasp the basics it becomes an invaluable resource to improve the user experience (UX), drive more conversions, and increase revenue.

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This guide is an introduction to web analytics—what it is and why it’s important, including examples of metrics to track and what tools you need. You’ll also learn how to combine web and behavior analytics to get a complete picture of what users do on your site—and why.

Learn what’s really happening on your website

Combine Hotjar’s behavior analytics with web analytics data to learn how users interact with your site, so you can improve it and increase conversions.

What is web analytics?

Web analytics is the process of tracking and understanding how people use your website . Its ultimate goal is to help you understand your users with data so you can optimize your site's performance and improve UX .

You collect and analyze user data using web analytics tools to track what happens on your site and answer important questions, including:

How many people visit your site?

Where do they come from?

Which pages do they visit?

How long do visitors spend on your most important pages?

How many leave after visiting a single page? 

These insights help you ensure your site is user-friendly and that it truly resonates with your target audience , so you can create delight.

The true purpose of analytics is to help you make good decisions. If you have an idea, you can use data to check the concept. Is it likely to affect a lot of visitors? Just a few? And once you make the changes, you can use data to see how well it worked. Did it make an impact? Was there a measurable change?

Top 4 reasons web analytics is important for your business

Web analytics is great for website optimization , helping you track what’s happening on your site and identify areas for improvement in terms of content and the overall user experience. 

When done right, web analytics helps you increase traffic, conversions, and return on investment (ROI) . Let’s take a look at how:

1. Learn who your website attracts and where they come from

Knowing who visits your website and where they come from helps you better understand different user personas . Web analytics helps you understand more about user demographics, goals, and behavior , so you can tailor your website's content and product offerings to their specific needs.

You also identify which channels drive the most traffic and conversions to your website and how to improve their performance. 

2. Understand how users interact with your website 

Knowing how users navigate your website, like what pages they visit and how long they spend on each page helps you understand what they're looking for and what they value. This web analytics data lets you give users what they need to perform a desired action on your site . 

It also helps you create content strategies and campaigns that resonate with your audience . 

3. Identify the pages that drive the most traffic on your website

Knowing what pages drive the most traffic on your website helps you understand users' preferences, so you can make informed decisions about your website and marketing efforts. 

Then, you can use these learnings to improve your content strategy, conversion rate, and user engagement . 

4. See how many users your website converts 

Website analytics also helps with conversion rate optimization —increasing the percentage of visitors who become subscribers or paying customers.

Knowing your conversion rate lets you determine how effectively your website's content drives visitors to take desired actions , whether that’s sales or leads. By monitoring your conversion rate, you see where users drop off in the marketing funnel , which helps you make changes to improve the user experience and increase conversion.

For example, say a SaaS (software-as-a-service) company wants to increase the number of users signing up for its software. They can see how many visitors sign up for a free trial or purchase a subscription by using web analytics to track the conversion rate and how many users drop off. The SaaS company can then make changes such as simplifying the sign-up process or providing more information about the tool to increase its customer base and revenue.

Now that we know how web analytics benefits you, let’s go over three types of web analytics metrics you should track. 

3 types of web analytics metrics to track 

As we explain above, traditional web analytics help you understand who visits your website and how they interact with its content. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Matomo, and Adobe Analytics to get this data.

Each of these software tracks metrics that are similar. However, because Google Analytics (GA) is the most commonly used tool, we’ll use it to help you understand critical web analytics metrics you should track .

1. Acquisition-related metrics

Acquisition -related metrics measure how you get website visitors—you understand who your visitors are and how they landed on your website. 

These metrics include:

Users : visitors who initiated at least one session during a selected date range. This metric helps you measure your audience size and determine if you're reaching the right people .

New users : the number of unique visitors in a specific date range. This metric helps you determine if you are attracting new traffic —people visiting your site for the first time.  

Sessions : all user interactions within a specified time frame. This metric helps you understand what users do when they’re on your website . 

2. Behavior-related metrics

Behavior-related metrics measure how people behave when they land on your website. They help you understand user behavior patterns, such as your most popular pages, how long users stay on a page, and what actions they take on the site. 

Bounce rate : tracks activity when a user visits a website page and then leaves without making another request. For example, if a user finds one of your blog posts through a search and reads it without clicking on any internal links or interacting in any other meaningful way before leaving, they 'bounced'. 

Exit rate : how often a user has left your website from a single page. When you know which pages visitors are exiting the most and at what percentage (i.e. the exit rate ), you can determine which pages you need to improve .

Pages per session: the average number of pages users view on your website during a session. This metric lets you determine how engaged visitors are on your website. For example, a high value shows that visitors actively explore and discover helpful information on your website. 

Session duration : the average time a user spends on a website in a single session. A long session duration may indicate that visitors find the website's content relevant and engaging, while a short session may indicate that the website fails to meet their needs or expectations.

3. Conversion-related metrics

Conversion-related metrics measure how many people take a desired action after landing on your website, revealing how many users convert and how much revenue you get. 

Ecommerce conversion rate : the percentage of visitors who complete a purchase on the site. This metric helps you see how effectively your website converts visitors into paying customers.

Transactions: this metric provides insights into the number of customer purchases, the average value of the transactions, and the total revenue you generate from sales.

Revenue: the amount of money you generate from the transactions on your website. This metric tracks the return on investment for your marketing campaigns and advertising efforts.

To show how a website performs, web analytics tools track quantitative data—every page view, bounce, drop-off, conversion, traffic source, and country of origin. However, while web analytics show you what's going on with your website, it doesn't tell you why. 

Combine web analytics with behavior analytics and product experience insights software to get a complete picture of what users and customers want from your pages and products, where they get confused , and where they focus their attention.

With web analytics, you see a clean set of events, like: someone visited the homepage → clicked on a button → visited a pricing page, and you get information such as how much time they spent on a page. The problem is: what happened in between those things? And what happened when they got there?

Maybe the time on the page is high because many people are scrolling down, and they’re lost and can’t find something. Maybe they got to the page by mistake, and now they’re stuck. Looking at what happens between those events is where it becomes really interesting. That's where you get the juicy stuff.

3 ways to pair web analytics with behavior analytics 

Let’s say GA reveals that you have a page that gets a lot of traffic but has few conversions. 

You know you need to change something on your website, but how do you make sense of this data? How do you know what to do next? Sure, you can make educated guesses about the problem, but you could be wrong and miss out on many revenue-generating opportunities. 

Combining quantitative and qualitative data gives you a holistic picture of your UX  so you can make changes that improve the experience. That’s where behavior analytics comes in.

Behavior analytics platforms—such as Hotjar (that’s us👋)—help you understand what users want, care about, and struggle with and answers questions like:

What are users interested in, and what are they completely ignoring? What do visitors think as they scroll down each page?

Are they leaving because something on the page is broken?

Where do they get stuck and struggle on your website or app?

What actions do users take just before leaving your website or app?

What do users want or miss on the pages they visit?

Together with web analytics, these answers give you a full picture of what’s really happening on your website. Here are three ways to pair the two:

1. Use heatmaps to identify page elements that influence conversions

Heatmaps are a powerful tool to understand what users do on individual pages on your website, allowing you to visualize and understand complex data at a glance . 

Insights from heatmaps help you identify which buttons and CTAs receive the most and least interactions and whether or not users scroll to the bottom of the page, so you can increase the likelihood of people using the site more often, staying longer on your most important pages, and making purchases.

For example, Taskworld, a project management solution, after tracking web analytics, wanted to know why more users weren’t completing the sign-up process and identify areas for improvement, so they created a heatmap .

The heatmap revealed that users weren’t clicking on the main sign-up CTA and got distracted by other elements. After Taskworld resolved the issue, its conversion rate increased by 40%, and drop-offs decreased by 4.5%.

2. Use session recordings to see your website through users' eyes

Session recordings capture and replay the user’s journey across your website to observe how people move around, what they click on or ignore while browsing, and whether they encounter any issues or obstacles along the way.

Every time I make a significant change on my site, I jump into Recordings. Numbers might reveal if something has gone wrong, but Recordings will tell me why.

Pro tip: filtering your session recordings helps you see real actions users took while on your most and least popular web pages. For example, you can review the recordings of customers who left your website in frustration or those who took a series of specific actions around your website.

Hotjar Session Recording filters

3. Collect feedback to improve conversion data

Collecting feedback—whether it’s through interviews , an on-page widget, or surveys —eliminates guesswork and provides you with key insights from your users. You can inquire directly with them about which aspects of your site they enjoy and which they would like to see improved. 

For example, Luke, a Product Lead at Hussle , used Hotjar Surveys to interview and gather insights from over 1,000 churning users immediately after they canceled their subscriptions.

Each response helped Luke identify common reasons users canceled, including small bugs or bigger user or product experience problems his team could fix.

Pro tip: use an exit pop-up survey to learn why people are leaving.

Placing an exit-intent survey on relevant pages lets you learn more about why visitors are leaving your site. Simply looking at your pages with the highest exit rates from web analytics tools will help you find the perfect page to trigger an exit poll.

With this data, you can use Hotjar to display a survey on the page you chose and even target users based on their device.

Hotjar poll targeting by page and device

Combine ‘web’ and ‘behavior’ analytics to watch conversions soar

Web analytics is great for understanding what’s happening on your website. However, numbers alone aren’t enough—they don’t give you the complete picture of the user’s experience—whether they’re frustrated or truly satisfied.

That’s why you need to use behavior analytics tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. Combining these tools with insights from a web analytics tool helps you identify bugs, broken elements, and potential blockers, so you can optimize your user’s experience and make their journey as smooth as possible.

Combine Hotjar’s PX insights with web analytics data to learn how users interact with your site so you can improve it and increase conversions.

FAQs about web analytics

Web analytics is the process of tracking and understanding how people use your website. Its ultimate goal is to help you understand your audience so that you can optimize your site's performance and improve their experience.

Why is web analytics important?

Web analytics is important because you:

Learn who your website attracts and where they come from

Understand how users interact with your website

Identify the pages that drive the most traffic on your website

See how many users your website converts to paying customers

What is the most popular web analytics tool?

Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool . However, while Google Analytics shows you what's going on with your website, it doesn't tell you why. 

You won't know what to do to improve your users' experience if you don't understand why they behave the way they do on your website. That’s why you should combine GA with behavior analytics software like Hotjar —to get the complete picture of what people want from your web pages, where they get confused, and where they focus their attention.

Simplifying Search Marketing

60% DECREASE in Pageviews – a Web Analytics Case Study

August 28, 2018 by Scott Benson Leave a Comment

A few months back we had the privilege of working with one of the nation’s top veterans support nonprofits. We were brought in through a partner to take a look at their SEO, but in doing so, immediately noticed some problems with their web analytics – their Google Analytics implementation was not tracking their visitors and their actions correctly. Part of our SEO audit process is to also review a website’s analytics implementation. Our reasoning for insisting on auditing the analytics is simple; you can’t improve what you can’t measure .

This is a website that exists primarily to collect donations to support vets and to sign up new memberships. Measuring how people find the website and which marketing channels are driving those conversions is critical.

How is it that a DECREASE in Pageviews by 60% could be a good thing? Let’s dig in…

Background and Recommendations for Google Analytics and Tag Manager:

• Not all web analytics systems are plug-n-play, even Google Analytics, so watch your implementation, and if you install yourself (out-of-the-box), then hire someone to test it.
• You own your data. Yes, the agencies you work with do need unrestricted access, but you need to know who’s in there and what they’re doing.
• These tools now have change history reports. Learn to use them.
• Yes, you should be running Google Analytics, and all marketing tracking scripts through Google Tag Manager. Here’s a good visual framework to follow for implementation:

Problem: Bounce Rate Red Flag

One of the first things we noticed when viewing some marketing reporting the organization provided, and jumping into their analytics, was an unbelievably low bounce rate. Now, I should note, I probably care less about bounce rate than most, depending on the type of page I’m reviewing, and the intent of the page, so don’t run screaming for the hills about bounce rate just yet. The problem was really with just how low the bounce rate was that we were seeing. In 2017 and 2018 the site was averaging somewhere around 15% bounce across all page types. Congrats, that’s either the stickiest site I’ve ever seen, or it’s just dead wrong. Well, we knew it was wrong without even finding the source of the problem.

We had to go back to 2015 to find a more normal looking bounce rate, which happened to be around 60% and is quite good. Obviously, we were dealing with a problem that had been around a while and likely longer than a lot of our contacts at the organization.

Problem: Triple Counting Pageviews

Once we saw the bounce rate issues, we had to find what was causing it to be so low. There’s a few known issues to check, and luckily it was one of the first tests we ran, and one of the easier to diagnose once you find it. By visiting their site and overriding the traffic source values with Google UTM parameters , we could see in the Real-Time reports in Google Analytics, that on nearly every entrance to the website — no matter the landing page – each of those “hits” were counting 3 times.

When Does Bounce Rate Matter?

I mentioned earlier my dislike for bounce rate as a metric for success. As an example, if you run a news-oriented site, or a blog, those types of pages historically have a very high bounce rate, and many people incorrectly assume that’s all bad. It’s not. Understanding how Google calculates bounce rate is critical in understanding when it is and isn’t important. If a customer of yours searches for a topic you’ve written about, and finds it on Google.com and clicks, then reads the entire blog post for 5 minutes, consumes the information they need and is fully satisfied by that experience, but they leave your site without clicking another link, then that visit is counted as a bounce by default. That also happens to be a very common user experience with blog posts, as the user finds the answer to the question they entered in Google .

In this case, the way the Google Analytics scripts were implemented was causing additional problems. At some point in those 3 pageviews, the user’s traffic source was being dropped, and some of the user visits were being attributed to “Direct to site”, as if they had typed in the domain name directly into the browser and visited directly.

The biggest issue here is in conversion attribution. The organization relies heavily on a robust email marketing program, and on social media traffic. As those marketing channels sent visitors to the site to donate or sign up their membership, and the users actually did take those actions, unknown numbers of those conversions were incorrectly attributed to Direct to site traffic. This results in the appearance of underperforming marketing campaigns, and an artificial attribution to a high brand performance. Direct site traffic is often assumed to mean the organization has a strong brand recognition, resulting in users simply typing the domain name into a browser.

Where should the CMO throw marketing dollars if the channels that cost money appear to be performing poorly?

Why is Google Analytics Tracking Multiple Pageviews?

Why was all this happening? The site was running two Google Tag Manager containers, and through those, running a combined 3 Google Analytics tracking scripts. Each GTM container was running their Universal Analytics scripts, which up until very recently was the most up-to-date tracking method, but additionally one of the scripts was also running the legacy GA.js Classic script. While Google claims you can run multiple Universal scripts, you can’t run the old and the new together, and likely can only run multiple if they’re actually different accounts, so each pageview is sent to both tracking accounts. I highly recommend the Tag Assistant Chrome plugin by Google , which is one of the tools we used to diagnose the problems.

In the end, the solution to this client’s analytics issues was simple. After some testing, we were able to work with the client to migrate the two GTM containers into one, shut down the Classic GA script, and pause the unnecessary second Universal Analytics script. We migrated all other marketing tracking scripts to the one GTM container, and worked on some of the rules for when those fire. After those fixes the bounce rate normalized to near 60%, which is actually quite good for this type of website, and those seemingly underperforming marketing channels started being attributed to revenue the way they should have been all along. The impact really opened some eyes internally, and we were really pleased with that result. Also as a result of the work to fix their tracking issues, the overall pageview numbers came way down. What was once a “soft” reporting success metric (whether correct or not), was now going to be ignored in favor of better conversion attribution.

Additionally we proposed a new structure for their Google Analytics reporting profiles. Their domain runs several sub-domains for their various marketing and eCommerce efforts. These were all reporting under the default view, and they didn’t have proper backup profiles. We first recommended utilizing a “Production”, “Testing”, and an “Unfiltered” view to make sure our data in the Production view is clean. The Unfiltered view is a data back-up and a best practice for Google Analytics. To properly measure all those sub-domains we recommended utilizing hostname and page path overrides in Google Analytics filters to see each individual site by itself, as well as roll-up reporting views that showed all the properties together, but cleanly showing the sub-domain name in the reports. Creating additional views as outlined below allows for different members of your organization to view only the data they need. For example, if I only work in HR and Recruiting, I might only be interested in what happens on a “jobs.client.org” web property. I don’t care what the marketing team is doing on the “www” site. You can create these departmental views, and have the roll-ups for a broader look at your entire organization.

Google Analytics is a fantastic resource, it’s free (with paid versions), and it can be incredibly easy to set up a basic implementation. It is also very easy to get that implementation wrong. Be sure to know what your digital marketing agency, or web development company is doing when they set you up — clean data is imperative to good marketing.

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Explore web analytics case studies. Find the path toward becoming data‑driven.

Our clients have become confident about making the right digital marketing decisions. their teams understand their business priorities and the path to reach their targets..

Agata continues to keep improving our data in ways we didn’t think were possible. We look forward to working with her from here on out.

James Clayson Director, Played Software

Hexagon is a global leader in sensor, software and metrology solutions. They turn manufacturing plants into smart factories, boosting productivity and product quality for their clients.

This well-established company launched a new ecommerce website to increase the sales of their aftermarket accessories. But without a measurement strategy in place, they were struggling to see their customers’ digital footprint and to accurately report on their webshop performance. Their team were lacking the tools and processes needed to optimise their online sales.

They realised that to grow their online shop further, they needed to connect the dots between customer journeys and sales. Their driving force when contacting Business Ahead was to work towards creating a digital insight function in-house while growing the revenue from the webshop.

The initial Google Analytics audit and measurement strategy defined the path towards becoming data driven for Hexagon. Our collaborative approach suited Hexagon as they were able to see our process and how each activity was bringing them closer to achieving their business goals.

We delivered:

• A measurement strategy with clear roadmap for fixing issues and gaining new insight
• A list of data-driven actions to boost shop performance and generate hundreds of thousands of new revenue within months
• A series of guidelines to keep data consistent and trustworthy

After that, we proceeded with Steady Growth Evolution. We continue to support Hexagon on their road towards getting more clarity and sales.

• Web analytics implementation and maintenance
• Report automation
• Workshops and training sessions

With our solutions, Hexagon has the support it needs to make better informed decisions. As we continue to work together, their team is empowered to embrace more and more of their web analytics.

Business Ahead delivered value beyond our expectations.

“When we got in touch with Business Ahead, we knew our web analytics data was inaccurate – but we didn’t know the extent of the issues and how to resolve them. Agata presented a clear plan of action that was detailed and thorough. Her unique way of communicating and structuring information made it easy to understand and follow – even the technical details.

By having realistic analytics, we are able to make better informed decisions and launch campaigns that are better targeted and measurable.

We were impressed with the insight report: it provided value beyond our expectations. In the past we conducted analysis in-house and with other partners. Agata’s report was more in-depth, better thought-out and gave clear instructions on what to do to gain new revenue, all backed by data. Implementing these recommendations was a no-brainer for us.

The user guides are really helpful for the entire team to get on-board. We have adopted them as our internal standard and best practice for working with Google Analytics data.

We are a very successful organisation but grounded in face-to-face selling and we want to become more cutting-edge. Business Ahead is helping us achieve that and I’m inspired by the progress we’ve already achieved.”

Arif Atkinson Head of Ecommerce

Agata is a whizz with data. She streamlined my reporting processes; I look forward to continuing to learn from Agata.

Steph Bridgeman Director, Experienced Media Analysts

Played Software

Played Software are the creators of an activity finder app. With their database of activities covering the whole of UK, their clients offer local communities an opportunity to find activities near them and book online. Their clients include Change 4 life and Lucozade.

Played Software wanted to provide extra value for their clients by giving them access to app usage data. Unfortunately, web analytics data was either unavailable or incohesive and they were struggling to present it in a meaningful way.

Single page web applications are notoriously problematic when it comes to tracking – and this activity finder app was no exception. We needed to develop a new measurement strategy and implementation from the ground up.

Based on the app’s functionality, we defined the interactions that needed to be measured and the structure for how each element should be tracked. We worked with the developers to adjust some of the code to make sure accurate tracking was possible. Finally, we configured web analytics to collect all the data effectively and we performed all the necessary testing to ensure the data was robust.

Once the data was in place, we also built a series of dashboards that could easily be replicated for additional clients as they came on board.

As a result, Played Software could offer each of their clients a custom-branded dashboard that showed them who visited their finder, which activities they browsed and which ones they booked. This was a key innovation for them and it allowed them to produce a new revenue stream based on the insight generated.

Agata took full ownership of the project, she clearly understood what needed to be done and how to achieve it.

“Analytics and efficiently recording accurate data is a key part of our business. It’s also an area we struggled to find someone who could manage it successfully for us.

Agata took full ownership of the project, she clearly understood what needed to be done and how to achieve it. She removed all the worry from this part of our business and continues to keep improving our data in ways we didn’t think were possible. We look forward to working with her from here on out.”

Agata did some amazing work fixing our existing tracking and analytics set up. She was great at communicating the issue, and very speedy in providing and implementing the solutions. I would highly recommend her to anyone.

James Williams Head of Digital Marketing, IMI Mobile

Assurant is the Fortune 500 brand behind insurance fulfilment solutions for top UK banks.

Assurant has traditionally relied on call centres to log claims for broken, lost or stolen mobile phones and other gadgets. They are in the process of improving their customer experience and are developing ways to save on costs associated with running call centres.

The company is actively developing a state-of-the-art web application that allows users to log a claim and get a decision in seconds. Data is at the centre of ensuring that the apps are optimised and that users can log claims consistently. Unfortunately, when they got in touch with Business Ahead, much of the data was not in place and not ready for the future developments planned.

Agata has been working with Assurant to develop their web application tracking. She has also introduced processes to ensure that all the necessary metrics are meaningful, accessible and robust enough to respond to agile development changes. After understanding what the key interactions were and what the future vision for the product was, we developed the tracking guidelines to systematise user journey tracking and to keep requirements consistent across multiple clients. We continue to work with the Assurant developers to implement new tracking and to educate them on how to produce updates that ensure tracking continuity. We’ve also implemented correct data collection and automated dashboards that help monitor the performance of the applications. Finally, we perform regular analysis to define actions that improve usability and to monitor performance after each release. The tracking and insight generation activities have saved Assurant and their clients millions in call centre costs over the past year.

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We help our clients become confident about making the right digital marketing decisions. With our support, their teams understand their business priorities and the path to reach their targets.

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Domino’s: Increasing monthly revenue by 6% with Google Analytics Premium, Google Tag Manager, and Google BigQuery

About Domino’s

Pizza seller and digital innovator, Domino’s is the leading pizza delivery chain in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. It is also the master franchise in Germany and Switzerland. UK Headquarters: Milton Keynes, England.

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

DBi marketing technology and data experts enable brands to leverage analytics to drive business performance. DBi is a Google Analytics Certified Partner and a Google Analytics Premium Authorized Reseller. Headquarters: London, England. Learn more at www.dbi.io .

Google Cloud Platform results

• Realizes an immediate 6% increase in monthly revenue
• Saves 80% YOY in ad serving and operations costs
• Increases agility with streamlined tag management
• Obtains easy access to powerful reporting and customized dashboards

Well-known pizza purveyor Domino’s is dominating pizza delivery sales in countries around the world. Today, Domino’s is the most popular pizza delivery chain operating in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland — and sales just keep growing.

In these regions in 2014, Domino’s sold 76 million pizzas and generated £766.6 million in revenue — a 14.6% increase from the previous year. In the UK and Ireland, online sales are increasing 30% year-over-year and currently account for almost 70% of all sales. Notably, 44% of those online sales are now made via mobile devices.

Multi-device pizza purchasing delivers fresh data opportunities

Domino’s has been a consistent digital innovator. Much of the pizza purveyor’s success stems from its early investments in strong ecommerce and m-commerce platforms that enable customers to purchase pizzas easily.

Domino’s sold its first pizza online in 1999. It launched an iPhone app in 2010, quickly followed by apps for Android and iPad in 2011, and a Windows app in 2012. By late 2014, Domino’s customers could even order pizzas from their Xboxes. The Domino’s marketing team had assembled a variety of tools to measure marketing performance, keeping pace with the company’s rapid innovations. Unfortunately, dealing with siloed analytics data from channel-focused tools was restricting the team’s ability to gain insights across all devices and channels.

The Domino’s team knew that valuable data insights were waiting just out of reach. To drive success, the team knew they must break down silos, connect datasets, and gain efficient reporting to get a more holistic and actionable view of customer behavior.

Better tag management propels agility across channels

The company's three main goals:

• Integrate marketing measurement across devices
• Connect CRM and digital data to create a holistic view of customer behavior
• Make cross-channel marketing performance analysis easy and efficient

The approach they decided would help them get there:

• Use Google Analytics Premium , Google Tag Manager, and BigQuery to integrate digital data sources and CRM data

Having taken strategic steps in its partnership with DBi, a Google Analytics Premium Authorized Reseller, Domino’s has turned its team goal of unified marketing measurement, holistic insights, and efficient actionability into a day-to-day reality.

For all of this to be possible, DBi leveraged the power of the data layer, a repository of information written into the page code used to store and send information to Google Tag Manager. Because the data layer stays independent of the HTML page structure, it remains consistent when the page content is updated and provides reliable, unchanging data sources for Google Tag Manager containers to pull from.

DBi deployed Google Tag Manager across many of Domino’s apps and websites, setting customized tags for all of the company’s ecommerce tracking and reporting needs. Despite there being a large number of unique containers, data layer consistency makes it easy to duplicate tags and rules — a significant time-saver and error preventor for Domino’s.

Connecting datasets provides holistic customer insights

Next, Domino’s and DBi turned their efforts toward connecting valuable datasets. Although Domino’s had extensive customer data, including demographic information, order frequency, and order method, the company needed to merge this data with digital analytics to enable deeper analysis of consumer behaviors and preferences.

With that goal in mind, DBi developed a custom solution using BigQuery to store and query Domino’s massive datasets in a fast, efficient, and affordable way. Using the BigQuery export feature in Google Analytics Premium, Domino’s can automatically export raw data to a BigQuery project on a daily basis. A secured FTP location and the BigQuery API enable daily automated uploads of CRM data into the BigQuery database on the Google Cloud.

Following the process described above, CRM data became easily merged with Google Analytics digital data via transaction IDs. Because BigQuery can process gigabytes of data in seconds, reporting queries are easy to build and automate. A report examining customer type by marketing channel, for example, reveals which marketing channels or keywords influence customer segments the most.

Google Analytics Premium drives significant results

Since implementing Google Analytics Premium, the ability to access a single Google Analytics account to evaluate web and app performance has made reporting easier and more efficient, and it has furthered the company’s ability to analyze and capture opportunities.

Integrated cross-device tracking has uncovered new insights into customer behavior, allowing the Domino’s marketing team to save 80% year-over-year in ad serving and operations costs.

The new Google Tag Manager implementation allows Domino’s to act fast. Tags can now be created, reviewed, and published in days, rather than having to wait months to catch the next development cycle. In fact, Domino’s used Google Tag Manager to quickly implement an on-site targeting tool that captured and realized an immediate 6% increase in monthly revenue — percentage points that would have been lost each month the project was delayed.

Lastly, connecting CRM data with digital analytics data provided Domino’s with greater visibility into how marketing efforts influence customers. This has enabled the Domino’s marketing team to make better budget allocation decisions and further improve ROI. The team can also customize powerful reports and dashboards to communicate its successes to business stakeholders.

With Google Analytics Premium in place, Domino’s benefits from data-informed decision-making. Going forward, DBi will continue to help Domino’s leverage every ounce of value made possible by Google Analytics Premium. Customized solutions, including Google Tag Manager and BigQuery, drive deeper customer understanding and better marketing strategies.

“Google Analytics Premium, combined with Google Tag Manager and BigQuery, has become an integral solution that gives us the technical agility and the analytics power we need to advance our marketing strategies."

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5 Real-Time Analytics Use Cases with Google Analytics

The online world is very competitive and hard to survive whether you are a content based website or an E-commerce store. It’s hard to thrive in the online world if you don’t track , analyze and report your website data. Using Google Analytics is the way to make these happen. You can easily analyze your customers or visitors’ behavior and which parts of your Brick and Mortar store perform better.

Staying in touch with your customers and taking actions according to their interests to increase your revenue become easier in Brick and Morter stores. In an online store, analyzing your customers is difficult since you don’t know enough information about them, this makes you blind to see ahead.

At this point, analytics tools come into play. Website analytics let you gain information about your customers and understand them. Google Analytics provide you many statistics about your online store and they let you know if your marketing efforts are good enough or not. You can easily determine important metrics and KPIs for your online store in order to thrive and survive by analyzing data from your visitors.

As I said, using Google Analytics in your E-commerce or content website is essential in order to track your customers’ behavior and analyze their actions to optimize your website and increase your revenue. So, how Google Analytics track and measure your performance?

There are plenty of features that Google analytics provide to track and measure your performance, but I will show 4 essential metrics to gain insight about Google Analytics:

• Real-Time Reporting
• E-commerce Tracking
• Average Visit Duration & Bounce Rate

1)  Real-Time Reporting

Google Analytics’ real-time reporting feature allow you to see monitor your website in real-time. You can easily monitor your website traffic, which pages are attracted by customers, what they’re browsing and whey they come from at that moment.

Also, you can measure your campaigns, events, social media posts’ performance and if they’re driving traffic to your website or not. There are six reports in real-time reporting:

• Traffic Sources : This real-time report let you monitor the percentage of active users on your website who are attracted by your event or campaign.
• Locations: This report shows your active users’ geographic locations on your website and you can easily monitor how many pages are viewed from each location. This report shows the performance of the locations during the last 30 minutes.
• Content/Screens: Content/Screens report enables you to which pages or content are viewed more in last 30 minutes. By clicking Pageviews/Screenviews, you can see the total number of page views.
• Overview: This report gives you the most of the information about your website, it shows referrals, pages that users entered to website and their locations.
• Events: Events report allows you to monitor your events’ performance in real time. There is an events report table and it shows top 20 event categories in last 30 minutes.
• Conversion: This report shows you goals that your active users completed. This report includes goals table that shows you 20 goals that active visitors completed in last 30 minutes.

2) E-Commerce Tracking

It’s important to know where your potential customers come from. Google Analytics’ E-commerce tracking feature let you know where they come from, so you can take actions in order to increase your potential customers. It lets you monitor your website’s transaction and revenue number. E-commerce tracking features let you:

• get more detailed statistics about transactions on your website
• increase your ROI by providing detailed customer and product reports
• report and track your campaigns’ performance
• measure your order value
• track your pages, events, social interactions, user timings and screens

Just set up the Google Analytics E-commerce Tracking and you can easily show a relationship between your sales data and website usage data. You can check here to set up E-commerce Tracking to your website.

Defining your Goals for your website in Google Analytics is a perfect way to measure your users’ specific actions completion. Defining your goals properly will let Google Analytics offer you a great information like conversion rate and the number of conversion of your website. It provides 4 types of goals:

• Tracking a specific URL so you can see URL’s traffic performance.
• Measure visit duration of your visitors. If you want to increase the time that users spend on your website, setting up a visit duration goal for a specific page can show you the performance.
• Tracking the number of pages that each visitors see before they leave from your website.

Setting up events and select them as a goal. So you can track many Google Analytics events such as widget usage, external links etc.

4) Average Visit Duration / Bounce Rate

Having a high bounce rate means that your visitors tour on your website but they abandon your website without interacting with your website. High bounce rate can be caused by your site design, page load time, bad content etc.

Not to miss your potential customers, you should optimize your website and engage your customers with your brand. To improve your bounce rate, you can calculate the average time spent and bounce rate by implementing Google Analytics to your website, reducing your page load time, optimizing your website’s design and sharing good content for customers’ satisfaction. Now, it’s time to show you 5 Google Analytics use cases.

1)   The Next Web Case Study

The Next Web is found in 2006. Founders Boris and Patrick were searching an event so that  They can present their startup. They decided to host their own event because they couldn’t find a proper one for themselves.

They noticed that they need a place for promoting the event and started The Next Web blog. The first objective was increasing the traffic of website. Then, they started to add promoting messages about the conference. They were using different messages and measuring the performance of each message.

As we discussed before, conversion is about your aims , what do you want to achieve, your goals. For The Next Web, it is about increasing number of attendees on their event. They used different messages to sell more tickets.

2)   The Watchfinder Case Study

Watchfinder is UK-based eCommerce website which sells watches and also opened a brick-and-mortar store in the London Royal Exchange. Their customers’ purchase decision was taking days, weeks, sometimes months. Their agency Periscopix analyzed visitors and created 20 lists about potential customers. Mainly, lists were focused on who are these people and what products they are interested in. They targeted their campaigns according to these analyses. The purpose was shortening the purchase duration and increasing the number of purchases.

3) Pelican Water System Sees 130% Higher ROI with Google Analytics

In this article, Michael Loban talks about how Pelican Water System’s ROI increased 130% by using Google Analytics. By using Google Analytics, they got better reports about how they generated offline orders by online marketing campaigns. They realized that 15% of overall conversions were influenced by Google Adwords.

4)  How Nissan Uses Ecommerce Tracking Without Directly Selling Online

In this article, author tells about How Nissan use E-commerce Tracking feature of Google Analytics effectively. Nissan used E-commerce tracking for visitors that submit a test drive request and gain more information about customers’ demands and satisfaction.

By using e-commerce tracking, Nissan gained much information about customers’ demands and analyzed this information to know about their cars’ popularity, reduce the time to summarize the reports by using custom reports and for a better decision making.

5) Marketo Case Study

Marketo is a software that enables its users to automate their marketing processes. Marketo’s marketing processes are aiming to increase conversions. In order to segment their potential customers, they used two-step analysis. Firstly, they used Marketo’s Real Time Personalization and examined visitor behaviors. Then, used these data on the Google Analytics to get insights.

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• Lesser time constraints for new campaign launches

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Three Short Marketing Analytics Case Studies to Inspire You to Love Data

Written by Anna Sonnenberg

Published Feb. 28 2022

Table of Contents

From engagement statistics to content analytics to conversion metrics, data is a big part of most social media managers’ responsibilities. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you enjoy processing marketing data or drawing conclusions from it.

If data isn’t exactly your favorite part of the job, these marketing analytics case studies may change your mind.

Find out how marketing analytics helped three major brands grow their businesses—and you might develop a whole new appreciation for marketing data in the process.

What Is Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics is the process of collecting and evaluating metrics to understand how much value marketing efforts generate. With analytics, you can assess the return on investment (ROI) of anything from social media posts and ad campaigns to landing pages and native platform features.

For many organizations and their marketing team, marketing analytics are essential for improving offerings and driving growth.

Here are common goals you can achieve with marketing analytics.

Improving marketing campaigns

Some social media marketing campaigns are more successful than others. Analytics can help your organization pinpoint exactly what works. By analyzing metrics like engagement, click-through rate (CTR), conversions, and ROI, you can determine what resonates best with its audience. By using data science, you can craft a marketing strategy that gets you better results from your campaigns.

Decreasing expenses

Ineffective marketing campaigns, usability issues, and poorly optimized algorithms can all lead to dissatisfied customers and unnecessarily high retention costs.

By investing in marketing analytics, your organization can take steps to identify points of friction and reduce expenses.

Forecasting results

Reviewing past outcomes is useful, but forecasting the results your campaigns are likely to generate is even more valuable. With marketing analytics, you can model results and get a better sense of how marketing initiatives can impact growth over time.

Marketing Analytics Case Studies: Progressive Insurance

In the early 2000s, Progressive’s website was routinely considered one of the best in the insurance industry. When the insurance provider’s customers began switching to mobile devices a decade later, the organization aimed to develop a mobile app as effective as its desktop site.

But what did that mean exactly? And what was the insurance provider’s mobile app missing?

To determine what would make the mobile app more successful, Progressive pursued an in-depth analysis of the organization’s marketing data.

As Progressive Data & Analytics Business Leader Pawan Divakarla explains , the insurance provider’s analytics team has always sought insight into how customers are using the company’s tools.

In his words, “At Progressive, we sell insurance. But if you think about it, our product is actually data.”

After launching the mobile app, Progressive began looking for ways to optimize the user experience. As this Progressive case study explains, the organization aimed to streamline the login process and improve user satisfaction to meet its ultimate goals of increasing customer loyalty and new customer acquisition.

Because Progressive’s mobile app generated so much information, the organization needed data visualization tools for collection and processing. To analyze customers’ experiences and actions, the company opted to use a combination of Google Analytics 360 and Google Tag Manager 360.

This choice was a relatively simple one for Progressive because the company already used these tools to run A/B tests and optimize its website.

Using Google’s analytical tools to review the company’s mobile app would allow Progressive to understand what features to test and how to optimize the user experience across countless mobile devices and operating systems.

Progressive used the two Google tools for separate yet complementary functions:

• With Google Analytics 360, Progressive could track user sessions and demographics. The company integrated BigQuery for more insight into user behaviors.
• With Google Tag Manager 360, Progressive could easily implement tracking tags to measure various actions, conversions, and navigation patterns.

To get the insights the company needed to improve its mobile app, Progressive took a three-pronged approach:

User device data

First, Progressive aimed to identify which devices and operating systems were most common among the app’s user base. With this information, the company would be able to develop more effective tests for its mobile app.

App crash data

Next, Progressive wanted to analyze app crash data. The company planned to use Google Analytics 360 and BigQuery data to understand the cause for the crash and how users reacted when the app stopped working abruptly.

Login and security data

Finally, Progressive aimed to learn how users responded when failed login attempts locked them out of the app. The company planned to use Google Analytics 360 and BigQuery to see what actions users took. It planned to then test new prompts that would guide users more effectively.

Outcome of this marketing analytics case study

Using marketing analytics tools , Progressive was able to process customer behavior, identify appropriate tests, and implement successful solutions.

Here’s how each of the three approaches generated useful results that helped Progressive reach its ultimate acquisition and loyalty goals.

First, Progressive developed session-based reports that reflected the most common mobile devices and operating systems for the app’s user base. With those insights, the company identified which device and operating system combinations to prioritize for its mobile app tests.

As a result, the company reduced testing time by 20% for its mobile app—allowing the organization to find solutions much more quickly than its typical timeline would have allowed.

Next, Progressive reviewed the actions customers took right before the app crashed. The company pinpointed a server issue as the cause of a major crash that disrupted countless mobile app sessions.

Using this data, Progressive could address the server issue and prevent it from happening again.

Finally, Progressive created a custom funnel in Google Analytics 360 to evaluate users’ typical login path. After learning that many users who became locked out of their accounts never attempted to log in again, the company developed a workflow that provided better guidance.

The new workflow sends users to a Forgot Password page, which has increased logins by 30%.

Marketing Analytics Case Studies: Netflix

When companies take a digital-first approach to customer loyalty, they can collect an incredible amount of user data. With these marketing analytics, companies can improve their products, build better marketing campaigns, and drive more revenue.

As this Netflix case study shows, the online content streaming platform has leveraged its user data in a variety of helpful ways.

By using data to improve its content recommendation engine, develop original content, and increase its customer retention rate, Netflix has positioned itself far ahead of the competition.

With so much data to leverage, Netflix had wide-ranging goals for the company’s marketing analytics. However, all of the organization’s goals contributed to the company’s larger business objectives—which focus on customer retention.

Netflix aimed to go beyond basic user demographics and understand what customers want from a streaming platform—and what was likely to convince them to stay. With this knowledge, Netflix could create better products and services for happier customers.

Access issues, service outages, and platform flaws can all lead to unhappy customers and negative sentiment—which can cause customers to seek out an alternative solution.

By identifying problems early through marketing analytics, Netflix could improve its products and continue to innovate.

To work toward its customer retention objective, Netflix collected data from virtually every interaction with its 150+ million subscribers. The company then used marketing analytics tools to process this native data and evaluate everything from how customers navigate the platform to what they watch.

By creating such detailed customer profiles, Netflix could make much more personalized recommendations for each user. The more data the company collected, the more it could tailor its algorithm to suggest the ideal content to each individual viewer.

To better understand the platform’s users, Netflix collected such data as:

• The devices viewers used to stream content
• Day of week and time of day when users viewed content
• Number of serial episodes viewers watched in a row
• Whether viewers paused and resumed content
• Number and type of searches users performed

Netflix also welcomed user feedback on content . The company incorporated these content ratings into their analysis to better understand viewer preferences.

According to the streaming platform, the Netflix algorithm is responsible for about 80% of viewer activity . The company has successfully collected relevant data and used marketing analytics to generate recommendations that encourage viewers to continue watching and subscribing.

The revenue metrics suggest that Netflix’s focus on marketing analytics has been hugely beneficial to the company. The company estimates that its algorithm generates $1 billion in value every year, largely due to customer retention.

In recent years, Netflix’s customer retention rate has far surpassed competitors like Hulu and Amazon Prime. Netflix has an impressive 90% retention rate , meaning the vast majority of viewers continue to subscribe to the service month after month. (In contrast, Amazon Prime’s retention rate is 75%, and Hulu’s is 64%.)

For Netflix, customer retention means more than happy viewers. It also means more data, a continually improving algorithm, and substantial business growth.

Netflix has emerged as the world’s most highly valued company, with a total valuation of over $160 billion. Netflix can continue to increase this valuation. It leverages its data by producing original media and recommending the ideal content to viewers every time they access the streaming platform.

Marketing Analytics Case Studies: Allrecipes

As the world’s biggest digital food brand, Allrecipes has 18 websites and more than 85 million users. But the brand also has plenty of competition from other food-focused apps and websites.

To stay ahead of other recipe sites and ensure that it continues to provide all the solutions that users want, Allrecipes relies on marketing analytics.

With marketing analytics, the digital brand can better understand the customer journey and analyze trends as they emerge. As this Allrecipes case study explains, the brand can expand its audience and attract even more lucrative demographics using these insights.

To continue to gain ground as the world’s top digital food brand, Allrecipes established several wide-ranging goals.

Some of the brand’s primary objectives included the following.

Improve user experience

With more than a billion and a half visitors across the brand’s sites every year, Allrecipes generates a ton of traffic. But the company needed a way to understand how visitors were using the site, so it could improve the user experience and gauge the health of the sites.

Increase video engagement

To take advantage of a demand for video content, Allrecipes had decided to invest heavily in video. However, the video production team needed strategic guidance. The brand needed to know what types of content would drive the most engagement.

Drive mobile engagement

To continue to meet the needs of its user base, Allrecipes had to look beyond its websites. As more and more people began using mobile devices to access the brand’s content, Allrecipes realized that the company needed to optimize its mobile app.

Inform product strategy

To promote new features and integrations or pursue partner programs, Allrecipes needed to know what its community wanted. Had they adopted the new integrations yet? Did they need new features to use the site or app more effectively?

Expand user base

Cooking and dining trends come and go, and Allrecipes needed a simple yet effective way to identify these developments.

By responding quickly to trends, the brand would be able to capture a larger user base, including elusive millennials.

Grow advertising revenue

Like many digital brands, Allrecipes has a native advertising program that allows the company to monetize its website. The company aimed to increase its advertising revenue, yet the organization didn’t want to compromise the user experience. To find the right partners to grow this program, Allrecipes needed deeper insights into its audience.

Although the brand’s goals were varied, the approach was relatively straightforward. To process marketing analytics from a wide range of channels, the brand opted to use Tableau, a business intelligence platform.

With Tableau, Allrecipes could establish a single platform for visualizing data from Adobe Marketing Cloud, Hitwise, and comScore. By linking Adobe Marketing Cloud to Tableau, the brand could pull in all of its website and marketing analytics. By linking Hitwise and comScore, the brand could source demographic data.

Using Tableau allowed Allrecipes to build custom dashboards and develop tailored reports to answer all of the brand’s questions. This tool also allowed the brand to pursue collaboration options across the organization.

In fact, departments ranging from marketing and design to product and finance contributed to the tool. Teams used Tableau Server to publish dashboards, creating a single space where stakeholders could visualize or analyze data.

With Tableau, Allrecipes was able to visualize the brand’s data successfully, enabling smarter decisions and making progress toward key goals. Here’s what the brand accomplished using marketing analytics:

Using insights from Tableau, Allrecipes was able to see how visitors typically used the site—including how they submit recipes, share content, and post links on social media channels. The organization then used this data to devise a plan for improving the site.

Knowing how visitors were already engaging with the site allowed the brand to make data-driven, goal-focused decisions.

With Tableau’s marketing analytics, Allrecipes found that out of all types of recipes, dessert typically generated more views and attracted more comments and photos. As a result, the brand opted to focus on this highly engaging niche, creating a separate video hub for dessert recipes.

To increase engagement on mobile devices, Allrecipes devised an A/B test that displayed the brand’s mobile site on all devices. Then the organization used the analytics to identify what drove interactions on mobile. The brand then used insights to improve the mobile site, including optimizing content and encouraging photo uploads.

Tableau’s data visualizations helped Allrecipes understand trends in its user community and respond to preferences more efficiently. Using these insights, the brand was able to promote integrations and features while gathering data for future product enhancements.

By using Tableau’s insights to process trends, Allrecipes was able to segment audiences for various recipe types, ultimately identifying millennial users’ interests and preferences. The brand was then able to create more content geared toward this growing user base—likely responding much more quickly than competitors could.

By tapping into real-time marketing analytics, Allrecipes was able to share popular recipe searches and trending content with its advertising partners during a recent holiday season. Advertisers could then create ads tailored to these interests, generating a better ROI and creating a more appealing experience for users.

What We Learned From These Marketing Analytics Case Studies

As these marketing analytics case studies show, data can tell you a lot about what your customers want—and where your organization succeeds or has room for improvement. Using insights from marketing analytics, a digital marketer can make data-driven decisions to cultivate customer loyalty, generate more revenue, and ultimately grow your business.

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Social and Web Analytics: An Analytical Case Study on Twitter Data

• First Online: 01 January 2022

Cite this chapter

• Hitesh Kumar Sharma 7 ,
• Tanupriya Choudhury 8 &
• Hussain Falih Mahdi 9  

Part of the book series: EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing ((EAISICC))

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There are many fascinating headings that can be investigated. Newspapers, blogs, articles print a lot of content and depict a lot about a person’s positive and negative aspects. In this chapter, we have explained how we can estimate those numbers of positivity, negativity, or neutrality about the product or services provided by an organization. This is the way toward recognizing and arranging sentiments communicated in a bit of content, particularly to decide if an author’s disposition toward a point/item is sure, negative, or impartial. It is utilized to check how positive or how negative an announcement is. This analysis is like manner called sentiment mining or opinion AI, is the path toward deciding if a touch of making is sure, negative, or unprejudiced. A run of the mill use case for this development is to discover how people feel about a subject. Sentiment analysis is broadly connected to audits and internet-based life for an assortment of utilizations. Sentiment analysis can be performed from various perspectives. Numerous brands and advertisers use watchword-based apparatuses that arrange information as positive/negative/impartial. Social media platforms play an important role in providing real time streaming data for such analysis. In this chapter we have tried to provide the complete pathway to do social media analytics.

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Sharma, H.K., Choudhury, T., Mahdi, H.F. (2022). Social and Web Analytics: An Analytical Case Study on Twitter Data. In: Jeyanthi, P.M., Choudhury, T., Hack-Polay, D., Singh, T.P., Abujar, S. (eds) Decision Intelligence Analytics and the Implementation of Strategic Business Management. EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82763-2_12

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How to write the perfect web design case study to win more clients

An immersive digital portfolio is the key to landing new clients. Learn how to show off your skills with a winning web design case study.

Design and build a custom portfolio website, visually, within 21 days.

A design portfolio without case studies is like a movie with no dialogue — visually present but lacking the substance needed to convey its full meaning.

Dialogue and case studies both communicate meaning. Without dialogue, audiences struggle to understand a film’s plot, characters, and themes, similar to how clients will struggle to understand the problem you solved, your design process, and the impact of your work without a thorough case study.

When you’re competing against other designers for a project or role, a well-written web design case study sets your portfolio apart , showing potential clients what you’ve done and what you’re capable of.

What is a case study?

A case study is an in-depth investigation into a person or group of people, a situation, event, or a product. A web design case study is a visual and textual analysis of a successful web platform, landing page , website design, or other web-based product. These types of case studies can be physical documents, but they’re often digital: PDFs, infographics, blog posts, or videos. Screenshots are an essential component, as are wireframes and mockups. But a robust web design case study also features detailed written explanations.

These visual and written elements work together to create a comprehensive assessment of the design process from start to finish, including the challenges faced, the solutions implemented, and the results achieved.

5 benefits of web design case studies

Now that we’ve touched on how case studies sell prospective clients on your work, here are a few other benefits of adding web design case studies to your portfolio website:

1. Demonstrate expertise

Case studies are a powerful marketing tool for designers to demonstrate their capabilities to potential clients or employers. A good web design case study showcases your skills and expertise in solving complex design problems.

2. Build credibility

In case studies, designers often include the name of the business, client, or project they’ve worked on, building credibility by providing real-world examples of their past work. You can even add testimonials and reviews to highlight positive feedback directly from those you’ve worked with.

3. Inspire future projects

Examining and analyzing your own work can inspire your next website build — maybe you’ll try one of the layouts that was nixed for this project or center the next design around an element you ended up loving. It also provides guidance and best practices for design projects, setting the bar for innovative design.

4. Encourage personal growth

Writing an investigation of your own design portfolio pieces after completing a project provides an excellent avenue for self-reflection. Reflecting on past projects, the struggles you’ve faced working on them, and what you’ve learned from the process will help you identify your strengths as a designer and areas of improvement to work on.

5. Improve communication

Presentations of your own work don’t just communicate the design process, decisions, and outcomes to clients. They also speak to stakeholders, including clients, team members, and management. A well-written case study illustrates a designer’s ability to effectively communicate complex design ideas and concepts, and writing it will improve your communication skills and offer insight into how effectively you work and collaborate with others.

What makes an effective web design case study?

A web design case study describes the process you took to solve a challenge with a particular web design project. A successful case study features a notable client project, a well-written narrative structure, and an engaging visual design.

Think of it as a story with an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. Throughout the story, show clients your approach to successful web design — the problem, the research you did to prepare for the project, the steps and iterations you completed throughout the process, and the final results you delivered. This narrative structure helps clients understand the project’s evolution and details your design process, making it key to an effective case study.

Case study curation and criteria

We’ve covered the basics of what a good case study looks like. But how do you determine which projects to include? If a project meets all the following criteria, it’s a good candidate for a detailed case study.

Is it relevant to the future projects you hope to explore?

If there’s a type of project you’ve completed in the past that you’d like to avoid in the future, that particular portfolio piece might not be a great option for a case study. You’re not just trying to sell yourself to clients — you’re trying to land jobs you actually want to do.

Does it have a defined initial problem?

Web design projects often arise as a result of a problem. These projects are perfect for case studies because the product design goes beyond appearance and functionality. Here are some of the issues your designs might solve:

• Poor user experience: To create a smooth, enjoyable experience for users, user experience (UX) design focuses on identifying and solving issues that cause frustration, confusion, or difficulty while using an app or a website, such as confusing navigation, misleading icons, or slow load times. Addressing these challenges lets you showcase your understanding of your target audience’s needs and demonstrates your ability to apply your creative and technical skills to solve them.
• Low search engine ranking: Redesigning a website with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind will improve its ranking in the search engine results pages, and you’ll have metrics to include in your case study to quantify the claims you’re making.
• Inconsistent branding: Brand design is a massive part of a company’s identity. A lack of alignment between the logo, colors , and other visual elements of a brand’s identity and its digital assets reflects negatively on the company, leaving customers with more questions than answers about who’s behind the brand. Good web design can bring a sense of cohesion to the company’s digital products, an achievement you can speak to in your case studies.

Does the outcome deliver measurable success?

Good design is subjective, but the best projects for case studies have data to show how successful they are. Search engine ranking is one example. You might also highlight impressive metrics for user engagement (bounce rate, time spent on the site), conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who make a purchase or fill out a form), or web traffic (the number of visitors to the website).

Is the project visually suitable for presentation?

When preparing a web design case study, consider the various formats it can be presented in, such as a video, static webpages, or interactive web content.

Selecting projects that fit your chosen presentation format is essential to showcasing your web design skills. As a web designer, it’s a given that whatever you’re presenting to potential clients needs to use thoughtful, aesthetically pleasing designs.

Design for display

There’s no single right way to present a case study. What’s most important is that your case study tells the story of the journey from an initial problem or idea to a finished product that meets the client’s needs.

A minimalist design will help you achieve this goal. But don’t confuse minimalist with boring. You can (and should) get clever with the presentation. Instead of using basic screenshots, for example, consider exhibiting your work in modern frames with immersive features. Or display screenshots of the product in its natural habitat. Webflow designer Karen Huang uses a digital screen in this user experience case study to feature a screenshot of the user interface (UI) on a smartphone screen just as users would experience it:

Build completely custom, production-ready websites — or ultra-high-fidelity prototypes — without writing a line of code. Only with Webflow.

How do you structure a case study?

The contents of every web design case study will vary, but they should all follow this basic structure:

1. A challenge

Start your case study with an introduction to your client and the problem your design solved. Include details about the project’s context, goals, and constraints. This section sets the stage for the rest of the case study and ensures the readers clearly understand what the project — and your solution — is all about.

2. A solution

Detail your approach to solving the challenge introduced in the previous section. Include information about your research, its methodology, and the data you gathered to develop your solution. Focus on your skills, not diagnostics — this is the place to showcase your intelligent approach, reasoning, and innovative ideas that ultimately resolve the challenge.

For this section, it’s helpful to break each key resolution into separate paragraphs and introduce images in chronological order to detail your design process. Screenshots of wireframes and strategy phases will paint a vivid picture of the project’s journey.

If you face any challenges or roadblocks while designing your solution, discussing them provides insight into your problem-solving skills and shows potential clients how you overcome difficulties. End this section with multiple pictures of the final product, and be sure to include a direct link to the project for potential clients and employers to peruse.

3. The impact

This section is where you’ll highlight metrics and data that back up the project’s success. Leverage metrics, user feedback, or whatever data is available to illustrate how your solution solved your client’s challenges and achieved the project’s goals. You can also include information about the potential longitudinal impact of your work and future opportunities for the project.

4. Key quotes

A case study is a perfect place to share client testimonials and add quotes from team members to help readers learn what the experts behind the project think about the build. Get creative but use quotes sparingly, sprinkling them throughout the case study to support the image or project stage the quote relates to.

Let your work do the talking

At Webflow , we offer the tools to make websites and the tutorials you need to perfect them. Learn how to start a web design business , make an online portfolio , or enhance your skills with a web design certificate with guidance from our blog and educational platform, Webflow University . Draw inspiration from our collection of templates and websites and start building your best site yet with Webflow.

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Top 10 Marketing Analytics Case Studies [2024]

The power of marketing analytics to transform business decisions is indisputable. Organizations leveraging these sophisticated tools gain unparalleled access to actionable intelligence that substantively impacts their financial outcomes. The scope of this invaluable resource extends from elevating the customer experience to fine-tuning the allocation of marketing budgets, presenting a spectrum of tactical possibilities. To explain the transformative impact and multifaceted benefits of employing marketing analytics, the article ventures into an in-depth analysis of five compelling case studies.

Each case is carefully selected to represent a distinct industry and set of challenges, offering a holistic understanding of how data-driven initiatives can surmount obstacles, amplify Return on Investment (ROI), and fortify customer retention metrics.

Case Study 1: How Amazon Boosted Sales by Personalizing Customer Experience

The situation: a tricky problem in early 2019.

Imagine it’s the start of 2019, and Amazon, a top name in online shopping, faces a confusing problem. Even though more people are visiting the website, sales are not increasing. It is a big deal, and everyone at Amazon wonders what’s happening.

The Problem: Complex Challenges

Figuring out the root problem was not easy. Amazon needed to know which customers weren’t buying stuff, their behaviors, and why the old methods of showing them personalized items weren’t working. It was a complicated issue that needed a smart and modern solution.

Related: Role of Data Analytics in B2B Marketing

The Solution: Using Advanced Tools

That’s when Amazon decided to use more advanced marketing tools. They used machine learning to understand different types of customers better. This insight wasn’t just basic info like age or location; they looked at how customers behave on the site, items left in carts, and trends based on where customers lived.

The Key Numbers: What They Tracked

To understand if the new plan was working, Amazon focused on a few key metrics:

1. Return on Investment (ROI): This showed the new marketing strategies effectiveness.

2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This KPI helped Amazon understand how valuable customers were over the long term.

3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This measured how costly it was to get new customers.

4. Customer Retention Rate: This KPI showed how well they kept customers around.

5. Net Promoter Score (NPS): This gave them an idea of how happy customers were with Amazon.

The Results: Big Improvements

The new plan worked well, thanks to advanced marketing analytics tools. In just three months, Amazon increased its sales by 25%. Not only that, but the money they made from the new personalized ads went up by 18%. And they did a better job keeping customers around, improving that rate by 12%.

Lessons Learned: What We Can Take Away

So, what did we learn from Amazon’s success?

1. Personalizing Can Scale: Amazon showed that you can offer personalized experiences to a lot of people without sacrificing quality.

2. Track the Right Metrics: This case study clarifies that you must look at several key numbers to understand what’s happening.

3. Data Can Be Actionable: Having lots of data is good, but being able to use it to make smart decisions is what counts.

Related: Tips to Succeed with Marketing Analytics

Case Study 2: McDonald’s – Decoding Social Media Engagement Through Real-time Analytics

Setting the stage: a tantalizing opportunity beckons.

Imagine a brand as ubiquitous as McDonald’s, the global fast-food colossus. With its Golden Arches recognized in virtually every corner of the world, the brand had an expansive digital realm to conquer—social media. In the evolving digital arena, McDonald’s was trying to mark its presence and deeply engage with its audience.

The Maze of Complexity: A Web of Challenges

Steering the complicated world of social media isn’t for the faint-hearted, especially when catering to a customer base as diverse as McDonald’s. The challenge lay in disseminating content and in making that content strike a chord across a heterogeneous audience. The content must resonate universally, be it the Big Mac aficionado in New York or the McAloo Tikki enthusiast in Mumbai.

The Game Plan: A Data-driven Strategy

McDonald’s adopted a strategy that was nothing short of a data-driven symphony. Utilizing real-time analytics, the brand monitored a series of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track the impact of its social media content:

1. Likes and Reactions: To measure immediate emotional responses from the audience.

2. Shares and Retweets: To gauge the virality potential of their content.

3. Impressions and Reach: To assess the scope and scale of engagement.

4. Click-Through Rates (CTR): To assess whether the content was sufficiently engaging to drive necessary action.

Types of content monitored varied from light-hearted memes to product promotions and even user-generated testimonials.

Related: Difference Between Marketing Analytics and Business Analytics

The Finale: Exceptional Outcomes and a Standing Ovation

The result? A whopping 30% increase in customer engagement on social media platforms within a quarter. But that’s not the end of the story. The customer retention rate—a metric critical for evaluating long-term brand loyalty—soared by 10%. These numbers didn’t just happen; they were sculpted through meticulous planning and real-time adjustments.

The Wisdom Gleaned: Eye-opening Insights and Key Takeaways

Several critical insights emerged from this exercise in digital finesse:

1. Agility is King: The fast-paced world of social media requires an equally agile analytics approach. Real-time monitoring allows for nimble adjustments that can significantly enhance audience engagement.

2. Diverse Audiences Require Tailored Approaches: The ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is a fallacy in today’s digital age. Real-time analytics can help brands develop a subtle understanding of their diverse consumer base and tailor content accordingly.

3. Retention is as Crucial as Engagement: While the spotlight often falls on engagement metrics, customer retention rates provide invaluable insights into the long-term health of the brand-customer relationship.

4. Data Informs, But Insight Transforms: Data points are just the tip of the iceberg. The transformative power lies in interpreting these points to formulate strategies that resonate with the audience.

Related: VP of Marketing Interview Questions

Case Study 3: Zara—Harnessing Predictive Analytics for Seamless Inventory Management

The prelude: zara’s global dominance meets inventory complexities.

When you think of fast, chic, and affordable fashion, Zara is a name that often comes to mind. A retail giant with a global footprint, Zara is the go-to fashion hub for millions worldwide. However, despite its extensive reach and market leadership, Zara faced a dilemma that plagued even the most formidable retailers—inventory mismanagement. Both overstocking and understocking were tarnishing the brand’s revenue streams and diminishing customer satisfaction.

The Conundrum: A Dynamic Industry with Static Models

The fashion sector is a rapidly evolving giant, where the ups and downs of trends and consumer preferences create a landscape that is as dynamic as it is unpredictable. Conventional inventory systems, largely unchanging and based on past data, emerged as the weak link in Zara’s otherwise strong business approach.

The Tactical Shift: Machine Learning to the Rescue

Recognizing the inherent limitations of traditional approaches, Zara turned to predictive analytics as their technological savior. They implemented cutting-edge tools that used machine learning algorithms to offer more dynamic, real-time solutions. The tools were programmed to consider a multitude of variables:

1. Real-time Sales Data: To capture the instantaneous changes in consumer demands.

2. Seasonal Trends: To account for cyclical variations in sales.

3. Market Sentiments: To factor in the influence of external events like fashion weeks or holidays.

Related: MBA in Marketing Pros and Cons

The Metrics Under the Microscope

Zara’s analytics model put a spotlight on the following KPIs:

1. Inventory Turnover Rate: To gauge how quickly inventory was sold or replaced.

2. Gross Margin Return on Inventory Investment (GMROII): To assess the profitability of their inventory.

3. Stock-to-Sales Ratio: To balance the inventory levels with sales data.

4. Cost of Carrying Inventory: To evaluate the costs of holding and storing unsold merchandise.

The Aftermath: A Success Story Written in Numbers

The results were startlingly positive. Zara observed a 20% reduction in its inventory costs, a metric that directly impacts the bottom line. Even more impressively, the retailer witnessed a 5% uptick in overall revenue, thus vindicating their shift to a more data-driven inventory model.

The Gold Nuggets: Key Takeaways and Strategic Insights

1. Technology as a Strategic Asset: Zara’s case emphasizes that technology, particularly machine learning and predictive analytics, is not just a facilitator but a strategic asset in today’s competitive landscape.

2. The Power of Real-Time Analytics: The case reaffirms the necessity of adapting to real-time consumer behavior and market dynamics changes. This adaptability can be the distinguishing factor between market leadership and obsolescence.

3. Holistic KPI Tracking: Zara’s meticulous monitoring of various KPIs underlines the importance of a well-rounded analytics strategy. It’s not solely about cutting costs; it’s equally about boosting revenues and improving customer satisfaction.

4. The Future is Proactive, Not Reactive: Zara strategically moved from a reactive approach to a proactive, predictive model. It wasn’t merely a technological shift but a paradigm shift in how inventory management should be approached.

Related: Hobby Ideas for Marketing Leaders

Case Study 4: Microsoft—Decoding Public Sentiment for Robust Brand Management

Background: microsoft’s expansive reach and the perils of public opinion.

Microsoft is a titan in the technology industry, wielding a global impact that sets it apart from most other companies. From enterprise solutions to consumer products, Microsoft’s offerings span a multitude of categories, touching lives and businesses in unprecedented ways. But this extensive reach comes with its challenges—namely, the daunting task of managing public sentiment and maintaining brand reputation across a diverse and vocal customer base.

The Intricacies: Coping with a Data Deluge

The issue wasn’t just what people said about Microsoft but the sheer volume of those conversations. Social media platforms, customer reviews, and news articles collectively produced overwhelming data. Collecting this data was difficult, let alone deriving actionable insights from it.

The Playbook: Employing Sentiment Analysis for Real-time Insights

Microsoft addressed this issue head-on by embracing sentiment analysis tools. These tools, often leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning, parsed through the voluminous data to categorize public sentiments into three buckets:

1. Positive: Which elements of the brand were receiving favorable reviews?

2. Negative : Where was there room for improvement or, more critically, immediate crisis management?

3. Neutral: What aspects were simply ‘meeting expectations’ and could be enhanced for better engagement?

Related: How to Become a Marketing Thought Leader?

Metrics that Mattered

Among the KPIs that Microsoft tracked were:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS): To measure customer loyalty and overall sentiment.

2. Customer Satisfaction Index: To gauge the effectiveness of products and services.

3. Social Media Mentions: To keep a tab on the frequency and tonality of brand mentions across digital channels.

4. Public Relations Return on Investment (PR ROI) : To quantify the impact of their PR strategies on brand reputation.

Outcomes: A Leap in Brand Reputation and Diminished Negativity

The result was a 15% improvement in Microsoft’s Brand Reputation Score. Even more telling was the noticeable reduction in negative publicity, an achievement that cannot be quantified but has far-reaching implications.

Epilogue: Lessons Learned and Future Directions

Precision Over Ambiguity: Sentiment analysis provides precise metrics over ambiguous opinions, offering actionable insights for immediate brand management strategies.

1. Proactive Vs. Reactive: By identifying potential crises before they snowballed, Microsoft demonstrated the power of a proactive brand management strategy.

2. The ‘Neutral’ Opportunity: Microsoft found that even neutral sentiments present an opportunity for further engagement and customer satisfaction.

3. Quantifying the Intangible: Microsoft’s improved Brand Reputation Score underscores the value in quantifying what many consider intangible—brand reputation and public sentiment.

Related: Reasons Why Marketing Managers Get Fired

Case Study 5: Salesforce—Attribution Modeling Unlocks the Full Potential of Marketing Channels

Background: salesforce’s prowess meets marketing complexity.

Salesforce, synonymous with customer relationship management (CRM) and Software as a Service (SaaS), has revolutionized how businesses interact with customers. The company’s extensive portfolio of services has earned it a lofty reputation in numerous sectors globally. Yet, even this venerated SaaS titan grappled with challenges in pinpointing the efficacy of its myriad marketing channels regarding customer acquisition.

The Challenge: Decoding the Marketing Mix

Salesforce diversified its marketing investments across multiple channels—from search engine optimization (SEO) to pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and email marketing. However, identifying which channels were instrumental in steering the customer through the sales funnel was a complex, if not convoluted, affair. The absence of a clear attribution model meant that Salesforce could invest resources into channels with subpar performance while potentially neglecting more lucrative opportunities.

The Solution: Attribution Modeling as the Rosetta Stone

To unravel this Gordian Knot, Salesforce employed attribution modeling—a sophisticated analytics technique designed to quantify the impact of each touchpoint on the customer journey. This model shed light on crucial metrics such as:

1. Last-Click Attribution: Which channel was responsible for sealing the deal?

2. First-Click Attribution: Which channel introduced the customer to Salesforce’s services?

3. Linear Attribution: How can the value be evenly distributed across all touchpoints?

4. Time-Decay Attribution: Which channels contribute more value as the customer gets closer to conversion?

The Dashboard of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Among the KPIs that Salesforce monitored were:

1. Return on Investment (ROI): To calculate the profitability of their marketing efforts.

2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): To gauge the long-term value brought in by each acquired customer.

3. Cost per Acquisition (CPA): To understand how much is spent to acquire a single customer via each channel.

4. Channel Efficiency Ratio (CER): To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of each marketing channel.

Related: How to Become a Chief Marketing Officer?

Results: A Refined Marketing Strategy Paying Dividends

By adopting attribution modeling, Salesforce could make data-driven decisions to allocate their marketing budget judiciously. The outcome? A notable 10% surge in overall revenue and a 5% increase in ROI. The effectiveness of each channel was now measurable, and the insights gained allowed for more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

Postscript: Reflective Takeaways and Industry Wisdom

1. Demystifying the Channel Puzzle: Salesforce’s approach elucidates that even the most well-funded marketing campaigns can resemble a shot in the dark without attribution modeling.

2. Customization is Key: One of the remarkable aspects of attribution modeling is its flexibility. Salesforce was able to tailor its attribution models to align with its unique business needs and customer journey.

3. Data-Driven Allocations: The campaign reveals the significance of using empirical data for budget allocation instead of gut feeling or historical precedents.

4. The ROI Imperative: Perhaps the most compelling takeaway is that focusing on ROI is not just a financial exercise but a strategic one. It affects everything from budget allocation to channel optimization and long-term planning.

Related: How Can CMO Use Marketing Analytics?

Case Study 6: Starbucks – Revolutionizing Customer Loyalty with Analytics-Driven Rewards

The backdrop: starbucks’ quest for enhanced customer loyalty.

Starbucks, the iconic global coffeehouse chain, is the most preferred place for coffee lovers. Renowned for its vast array of beverages and personalized service, Starbucks confronted a pivotal challenge: escalating customer loyalty and encouraging repeat visits in an intensely competitive market.

The Dilemma: Deciphering Consumer Desires in a Competitive Arena

In the dynamic landscape of the coffee industry, understanding and catering to evolving customer preferences is paramount. Starbucks faced the daunting task of deciphering these varied customer tastes and devising compelling incentives to foster customer loyalty amidst fierce competition.

The Strategic Overhaul: Leveraging Analytics in the Loyalty Program

Starbucks revamped its loyalty program by embracing a data-driven approach and deploying sophisticated analytics to harvest and interpret customer data. This initiative focused on crafting personalized rewards and offers, aligning perfectly with customer preferences and behaviors. The analytics framework delved into:

1. Purchase Patterns: Analyzing frequent purchase habits to tailor rewards.

2. Customer Preferences: Understanding individual likes and dislikes for more personalized offers.

3. Engagement Metrics: Monitoring customer interaction with the loyalty program to refine its appeal.

The Analytical Lens: Focused KPIs

Starbucks’ revamped loyalty program was scrutinized through these key performance indicators:

1. Loyalty Program Enrollment: Tracking the growth in membership numbers.

2. Repeat Visit Rate: Measuring the frequency of customer visits post-enrollment.

3. Customer Satisfaction Index: Gauging the levels of satisfaction and overall experience.

4. Redemption Rates of Offers: Understanding the effectiveness of personalized offers and rewards.

The Triumph: A Narrative of Success through Numbers

The implementation of analytics in the loyalty program bore significant fruit. Starbucks experienced a remarkable 20% increase in loyalty program membership and a 15% rise in the frequency of customer visits. More than just numbers, these statistics represented a deepening of customer relationships and an elevation in overall satisfaction.

The Crux of Wisdom: Essential Insights and Strategic Perspectives

1. Customer-Centric Technology: The Starbucks case highlights the crucial role of technology, especially analytics, in understanding and catering to customer needs, thereby not just facilitating but enriching the customer experience.

2. Personalization as a Loyalty Catalyst: The successful implementation of personalized rewards based on analytics underscores the effectiveness of customized engagement in enhancing loyalty.

3. Comprehensive KPI Tracking: Starbucks’ meticulous tracking of diverse KPIs illustrates the importance of a multi-dimensional analytics approach. It’s a blend of tracking memberships and understanding engagement and satisfaction.

4. Proactive Customer Engagement: Beyond traditional loyalty programs, Starbucks’ strategy shifts towards a proactive, analytics-based engagement model.

Related: Marketing Executive Interview Questions

Case Study 7: Uber – Revolutionizing Ride-Hailing with Predictive Analytics

Setting the scene: uber’s mission to refine ride-hailing.

Uber, a pioneer in the ride-hailing sector, consistently leads the way in technological advancements. To refine its operational efficiency and enhance the user experience, Uber faced the intricate challenge of synchronizing the supply of drivers with the fluctuating demand of riders across diverse geographical terrains.

The Challenge: Harmonizing Supply and Demand

The core challenge for Uber lies in efficiently balancing the availability of drivers with the dynamically changing needs of customers in different locations. This balancing act was essential for sustaining operational effectiveness and guaranteeing customer contentment.

The Strategic Move: Embracing Real-Time Data Analytics

In response, Uber turned to the power of real-time analytics. This strategic shift involved:

1. Demand Prediction: Leveraging data to forecast rider demand in different areas.

2. Dynamic Pricing Mechanism: Employing algorithmic solutions to modify pricing in real-time in response to the intensity of demand.

3. Driver Allocation Optimization: Using predictive analytics to guide drivers to areas with anticipated high demand.

Results: Measurable Gains in Efficiency and Satisfaction

The results of this approach, grounded in data analytics, were impressive. Uber saw a 25% decrease in average wait times for riders, a direct indicator of enhanced service efficiency. Additionally, driver earnings saw a 10% increase, reflecting better allocation of rides. Importantly, these improvements translated into higher overall customer satisfaction.

Related: Is Becoming a CMO Worth It?

Case Study 8: Spotify – Harnessing Music Analytics for Enhanced Personalization

Backstory: spotify’s pursuit of personalized music experience.

Spotify, the global giant in music streaming, sought to deepen user engagement by personalizing the listening experience. In a digital landscape where user preference is king, Spotify aimed to stand out by offering uniquely tailored music experiences to its vast user base.

The Challenge: Navigating a Sea of Diverse Musical Tastes

With an expansive library of music, Spotify faced the critical task of catering to the incredibly diverse tastes of its users. The task was to craft a unique, personalized listening experience for each user within a vast library containing millions of songs.

The Strategy: Leveraging Machine Learning for Custom Playlists

To address this, Spotify deployed machine learning algorithms in a multifaceted strategy:

1. Listening Habit Analysis: Analyzing user data to understand individual music preferences.

2. Playlist Curation: Employing algorithms to generate personalized playlists tailored to match the individual tastes of each user.

3. Recommendation Engine Enhancement: Continuously refining the recommendation system for more accurate and engaging suggestions.

Results: A Symphony of User Engagement and Loyalty

Implementing these machine-learning strategies led to a remarkable 30% increase in user engagement. This heightened engagement was a key factor in driving a significant rise in premium subscription conversions, underscoring the success of Spotify’s personalized approach.

Related: How Can Creating a Course Lead to Marketing Your Business?

Case Study 9: Airbnb – Advancing Market Positioning and Pricing with Strategic Analytics

Overview: airbnb’s quest for pricing and positioning excellence.

Airbnb, the revolutionary online lodging marketplace, embarked on an ambitious mission to optimize its global listings’ pricing and market positioning. This initiative aimed to maximize booking rates and ensure fair pricing for hosts and guests in a highly competitive market.

The Challenge: Mastering Competitive Pricing in a Diverse Market

Airbnb’s main challenge was pinpointing competitive pricing strategies that would work across its vast array of worldwide listings. The task was to understand and adapt to market demand trends and local variances in every region it operated.

The Strategic Approach: Dynamic Pricing Through Data Analytics

To achieve this, Airbnb turned to the power of analytics, developing a dynamic pricing model that was sensitive to various factors:

1. Location-Specific Analysis: Understanding the pricing dynamics unique to each location.

2. Seasonality Considerations: Adjusting prices based on seasonal demand fluctuations.

3. Event-Based Pricing: Factoring in local events and their impact on accommodation demand.

Results: A Story of Enhanced Performance and Satisfaction

This analytical approach reaped significant rewards. Airbnb saw a 15% increase in booking rates, indicating a successful price alignment with market demand. Additionally, this strategy led to increased revenues for hosts and bolstered customer satisfaction due to more equitable pricing.

Case Study 10: Domino’s – Transforming Pizza Delivery with Analytics-Driven Logistics

Background: domino’s drive for enhanced delivery and service.

Domino’s Pizza, a global leader in pizza delivery, set out to redefine its delivery efficiency and elevate its customer service experience. In the fiercely competitive fast-food industry, Domino’s aimed to stand out by ensuring faster and more reliable delivery.

The Challenge: Streamlining Deliveries in a Fast-Paced Environment

The critical challenge for Domino’s was ensuring timely deliveries while maintaining food quality during transit. It required a subtle understanding of logistics and customer service dynamics.

The Strategy: Optimizing Delivery with Data and Technology

Domino’s responded to this challenge by implementing sophisticated logistics analytics:

1. Route Optimization Analytics: Utilizing data to determine the fastest and most efficient delivery routes.

2. Quality Tracking Systems: Introducing technology solutions to track and ensure food quality throughout delivery.

Results: Measurable Gains in Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction

Adopting these strategies led to a notable 20% reduction in delivery times. This improvement was not just about speed; it significantly enhanced customer satisfaction, as reflected in improved customer feedback scores.

Conclusion: The Transformative Impact of Marketing Analytics in Action

Wrapping up our exploration of these five case studies, one unambiguous insight stands out: the effective application of marketing analytics is pivotal for achieving substantial business gains.

1. Personalization Works: The e-commerce platform’s focus on customer segmentation led to a 25% boost in conversion rates, underscoring that tailored strategies outperform generic ones.

2. Real-Time Matters: McDonald’s implementation of real-time analytics increased customer engagement by 30% and improved retention rates by 10%.

3. Forecast to Optimize: Zara’s application of predictive analytics streamlined inventory management, resulting in a 20% cost reduction and a 5% revenue increase.

4. Sentiment Drives Perception: Microsoft leveraged sentiment analysis to enhance its brand image, achieving a 15% rise in brand reputation score.

5. Attribution is Key: Salesforce’s adoption of attribution modeling led to a 10% revenue increase and a 5% boost in ROI, optimizing their marketing budget allocation.

These case studies demonstrate the unparalleled value of utilizing specialized marketing analytics tools to meet diverse business goals, from boosting conversion rates to optimizing ROI. They are robust examples for organizations seeking data-driven marketing decisions for impactful results.

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CXPA Seeks CX Case Studies for 2024 CX Impact Awards

By gabe smith, ccxp posted yesterday.

Customer experience is a pivotal factor in driving the financial success of leading organizations around the world. At CXPA, we believe in the power of sharing these success stories to help achieve our 10 year goal of securing the future of CX as a trusted and preferred business discipline, in service to a vision of exceptional outcomes powered by inspired CX professionals. We want to hear about your initiatives and how your efforts have led to better outcomes for customers, employees, and organizations. 

Why Share Your Case Study?

The goal of this initiative is twofold. First, submitted case studies will automatically be considered for CXPA’s CX Impact Award, with winning organizations to be announced on CX Day, Tuesday, October 1 st . CXPA’s Impact Awards celebrate those organizations that have utilized CX as a business discipline to drive organizational success.

Second, we want to build a repository of case studies that illustrate the tangible business value of effective CX practices. By sharing your story, you contribute to a collective, independent knowledge base that can guide CX leaders in a variety of industries around the world and serve as proof points for C-suite leaders that CX delivers real results.

The Business Value of CX

This year's CX Day theme is "Good Customer Experience Drives Positive Outcomes for Customers, Employees, and the Organization's Bottom Line,” and our annual Impact Awards will grant recognition to those organizations that have achieved these results. Well-designed and managed CX efforts can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher referral rates, and improved revenue growth. To truly understand and showcase the impact of CX to the C-Suite, it's crucial to demonstrate clear correlations between CX initiatives and business results. We're particularly interested in recognizing how your efforts have led to operational efficiencies, financial gains, and other measurable business outcomes.

What We're Looking For

We seek case studies that go beyond surface-level success metrics. We're interested in detailed narratives that explain the challenges you faced, the strategies you implemented, and the results you achieved. Specifically, we want to see:

Financial Impact : How did your efforts affect the bottom line? Show us the numbers—whether it's revenue growth, profit margin improvement, or other financial metrics.

Operational Impact : How did your CX initiative streamline processes, reduce costs, or improve efficiency? Provide concrete examples and data to illustrate these changes.

Before and After Comparison: Provide quantitative data showing the business KPIs before and after the initiative. While positive changes in CX metrics are commendable, only studies that show business operational and financial impact will be considered for publication, inclusion in educational programming, or for award recognition.

The Submission Process

Our submission process is designed to be straightforward and accessible, and will open on Monday, June 17 th .   We ask that you prepare your case study in a detailed PDF or Word document, ensuring it includes all necessary information to showcase the impact of your CX initiative. Once your case study is ready, you'll be able to submit it through our online intake form. We will review all submissions and may reach out for additional information or interviews to gain deeper insights into your success, and you’ll have the chance to tell us if there are aspects of your case study that should remain private.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and learning about the exceptional outcomes you and your organizations are achieving!

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Targeting in protracted crises: nigeria case study.

This country case study focuses on Nigeria and the specific challenge of conflict, violence, and insecurity. Using four waves of General Household Survey data covering the period 2010 to 2019, we analyse trends in poverty, food insecurity, shocks, and coping strategies among different population groups, differentiated according to where they reside in the country and the degree to which those areas are affected by violence, in particular as a result of the militant Islamist Boko Haram insurgency and conflicts between herders and farmers. The survey data is then used to model the notional performance of different potential targeting approaches across a range of targeting performance indicators, to indicate the types of choices and trade-offs entailed when selecting different targeting criteria for either routine or humanitarian social assistance programmes in the context of Nigeria. We also consider the status of enabling conditions for implementing different targeting approaches in the form of key infrastructure. We conclude with a discussion of the interrelated considerations social assistance programmes have to contend with when selecting appropriate targeting criteria.

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Machine Learning Techniques and Analytics for Cloud Security covers new methods, surveys, case studies, and policy with almost all machine learning techniques and analytics for cloud security solutions.

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Protecting people from a changing climate: The case for resilience

About the authors.

This article is a collaborative effort by Harry Bowcott , Lori Fomenko, Alastair Hamilton , Mekala Krishnan , Mihir Mysore , Alexis Trittipo, and Oliver Walker.

The United Nations’ 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report stated —with higher confidence than ever before—that, without meaningful decarbonization, global temperatures will rise to at least 1.5°C above preindustrial levels within the next two decades. 1 Climate change 2021: The physical science basis , Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), August 2021, ipcc.ch. This could have potentially dangerous and irreversible effects. A better understanding of how a changing climate could affect people around the world is a necessary first step toward defining solutions for protecting communities and building resilience. 2 For further details on how a changing climate will impact a range of socioeconomic systems, see “ Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts ,” McKinsey Global Institute, January 16, 2020.

As part of our knowledge partnership with Race to Resilience at the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, we have built a detailed, global assessment of the number of people exposed to four key physical climate hazards, primarily under two different warming scenarios. This paper lays out our methodology and our conclusions from this independent assessment.

A climate risk analysis focused on people: Our methodology in brief

Our research consists of a global analysis of the exposure of people’s lives and livelihoods to multiple hazards related to a changing climate. This analysis identifies people who are potentially vulnerable to four core climate hazards—heat stress, urban water stress, agricultural drought, and riverine and coastal flooding—even if warming is kept within 2.0°C above preindustrial levels.

Our methodology

The study integrates climate and socioeconomic data sources at a granular level to evaluate exposure to climate hazards. We used an ensemble mean of a selection of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global climate models under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 —using a Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP2) for urban water stress—with analysis conducted under two potential warming scenarios: global mean temperature increases above preindustrial levels of 1.5°C and 2.0°C. We sometimes use the shorthand of “1.5°C warming scenario” and “2.0°C warming scenario” to describe these scenarios. Our modeling of temperatures in 2030 refers to a multidecadal average between 2021 and 2040. When we say 2050, we refer to a multidecadal average between 2041 and 2060. These are considered relative to a reference period, which is dependent on hazard basis data availability (which we sometimes refer to as “today”).

We built our analysis by applying 2030 and 2050 population-growth projections to our 1.5°C and 2.0°C warming scenarios, respectively. This amount of warming by those time periods is consistent with an RCP 8.5 scenario, relative to the preindustrial average. Climate science makes extensive use of scenarios. We chose a higher emissions scenario of RCP 8.5 to measure the full inherent risk from a changing climate. Research also suggests that cumulative historical emissions, which indicate the actual degree of warming, have been in line with RCP 8.5. 1 For further details, see “ Climate risk and response ,” January 16, 2020, appendix; see also Philip B. Duffy, Spencer Glendon, and Christopher R. Schwalm, “RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO2 emissions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) , August 2020, Volume 117, Number 33, pp. 19656–7, pnas.org. In some instances, we have also considered a scenario in which decarbonization actions limit warming and 1.5°C of warming relative to the preindustrial levels is only achieved in 2050, rather than in 2030. For our analysis we used models which differ to some extent on their exact amount of warming and timing, even across the same emissions scenario (RCP 8.5). Naturally, all forward-looking climate models are subject to uncertainty, and taking such an ensemble approach to our model allows us to account for some of that model uncertainty and error. 2 For a more detailed discussion of these uncertainties, see chapter 1 of “ Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts ,” McKinsey Global Institute, January 16, 2020. However, the mean amount of warming typically seen across our ensemble of models is approximately 1.5°C by 2030 and 2.0°C by 2050.

Our analysis consisted of three major steps (see technical appendix for details on our methodology):

First, we divided the surface of the planet into a grid composed of five-kilometer cells, with climate hazards and socioeconomic data mapped for each cell.

Second, in each of those cells, we combined climate and socioeconomic data to estimate the number and vulnerability of people likely to be exposed to climate hazards. These data were categorized on the basis of severity and classified on the basis of exposure to one or more hazards at the grid-cell level.

Third, taking into account people’s vulnerability, we examined the potential impact of our four core hazards on the current and future global population. To do this, we assessed, globally, the number and vulnerability of people affected by different types and severities of hazards. We then aggregated the data from each cell up to the subnational, national, subcontinental, continental, and global levels to allow for comparison across countries.

It’s important to note that we carefully selected these four hazards because they capture the bulk of hazards likely to affect populations on a global scale. We did not account for a range of other hazards such as wildfires, extreme cold, and snow events. Further, our analysis accounts only for first-order effects of climate hazards and does not take into account secondary or indirect effects, which can have meaningful impact. Drought, for example, can lead to higher food prices and even migration—none of which are included in our analysis. Thus, the number of people affected by climate hazards is potentially underestimated in this work.

A focus on four main climate hazards

For our study, we used global data sets covering four key hazards: heat stress, urban water stress, agricultural drought, and riverine and coastal flooding. We relied on data from a selection of CMIP5 climate models, unless otherwise specified. For further details, see the technical appendix.

Heat stress

Heat stress can have meaningful impacts on lives and livelihoods as the climate changes. Heat stress is measured using wet-bulb temperature, which combines heat and humidity. We assess heat stress in the form of acute exposure to humid heat-wave occurrence as well as potential chronic loss in effective working hours, both of which depend on daily wet-bulb temperatures. Above a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C, heat stress can be fatal.

Acute humid heat waves are defined by the average wet-bulb temperature of the hottest six-hour period during a rolling three-day period in which the daily maximum wet-bulb temperature exceeds 34°C for three consecutive days. 3 Analysis of lethal heat waves in our previous McKinsey Global Institute report (see “ Climate risk and response ,” January 16, 2020) was limited to urban populations, and the temperature threshold was set to 34°C wet-bulb temperature under the assumption that the true wet-bulb temperature would actually be 35°C due to an additional 1°C from the urban heat-island effect. Heat-wave occurrence was calculated for each year for both a reference time period 4 The reference period for heat stress refers to the average between 1998 and 2017. and our two future time periods and translated into annual probabilities. Exposure was defined as anyone living in either an urban or rural location with at least a 2 percent annual probability of experiencing such a humid heat wave in any given year. Acute humid heat waves of 34°C or higher can be detrimental to health, even for a healthy and well-hydrated human resting in the shade, because the body begins to struggle with core body-temperature regulation and the likelihood of experiencing a heat stroke increases.

Chronic heat stress was assessed for select livelihoods and defined by processing daily mean air temperature and relative humidity data into a heat index and translating that into the fraction of average annual effective working hours lost due to heat exposure. This calculation was conducted following the methods of John P. Dunne et al., 5 John P. Dunne, Ronald J. Stouffer, and Jasmin G. John, “Reductions in labour capacity from heat stress under climate warming,” Nature Climate Change , 2013, Volume 3, Number 6, pp. 563–6, nature.com. using empirically corrected International Organization for Standardization (ISO) heat-exposure standards from Josh Foster et al. 6 Josh Foster et al., “A new paradigm to quantify the reduction of physical work capacity in the heat,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise , 2019, Volume 51, Number 6S, p. 15, journals.lww.com.

We combined groups of people who were exposed to both chronic and acute heat stress to assess the aggregate number of people exposed. Heat stress can affect livelihoods, particularly for those employed in outdoor occupations, most prominently because an increased need for rest and a reduction in the body’s efficiency reduce effective working hours. Therefore, our analysis of potential exposure to chronic heat stress was limited to people estimated to be working in agriculture, crafts and trades, elementary, factory-based, and manufacturing occupations likely to experience at least a 5 percent loss of effective working hours on average annually. We excluded managers, professional staff, and others who are more likely to work indoors, in offices, or in other cooled environments from this analysis.

Urban water stress

Urban water stress 7 The reference period for water stress refers to the average between 1950 and 2010. often occurs in areas in which demand for water from residents, local industries, municipalities, and others exceeds the available supply. This issue can become progressively worse over time as demand for water continues to increase and supply either remains constant, decreases due to a changing climate, or even increases but not quickly enough to match demand. This can reduce urban residents’ access to drinking water or slow production in urban industry and agriculture.

Our analysis of water stress is limited to urban areas partially because water stress is primarily a demand-driven issue that is more influenced by socioeconomic factors than by changes in climate. We also wanted to avoid methodological overlap with our agricultural drought analysis, which mostly focused on rural areas.

We define urban water stress as the ratio of water demand to supply for urban areas globally. We used World Resources Institute (WRI) data for baseline water stress today and the SSP2 scenario for future water stress outlooks, where 2030 represents the 1.5°C warming scenario and 2040 represents the 2.0°C warming scenario. We only considered severe water stress, defined as withdrawals of 80 percent or more of the total supply, which WRI classifies as “extremely high” water stress.

We make a distinction for “most severe” urban water stress, defined as withdrawals of more than 100 percent of the total supply, to show how many people could be affected by water running out—a situation that will require meaningful interventions to avoid. However, for the sake of the overall exposure analysis, people exposed to the most severe category are considered to be exposed to “severe” water stress unless otherwise noted (exhibit).

Agricultural drought

Agricultural drought 8 The reference period for agricultural drought refers to the average between 1986 and 2005. is a slow-onset hazard defined by a period of months or years that is dry relative to a region’s normal precipitation and soil-moisture conditions, specifically, anomalously dry soils in areas where crops are grown. Drought can inhibit plant growth and reduce plant production, potentially leading to poor yields and crop failures. For more details, see the technical appendix.

Riverine and coastal flooding

We define flooding as the presence of water at least one centimeter deep on normally dry land. We analyze two types of flooding here: riverine flooding from rivers bursting their banks and coastal flooding from storm surges and rising sea levels pushing water onto coastal land. Both coastal and riverine flooding can damage property and infrastructure. In severe cases, they could lead to loss of life. 9 The reference period for riverine flooding refers to the average between 1960 and 1999; the reference period for coastal flooding refers to the average between 1979 and 2014. For more details, see the technical appendix.

Based on a combination of frequency and intensity metrics, we estimated three severity levels of each climate hazard: mild, moderate, and severe (exhibit).

Even when we only look at first-order effects, it is clear that building resilience and protecting people from climate hazards are critical. Our analysis provides data that may be used to identify the areas of highest potential exposure and vulnerability and to help build a case for investing in climate resilience on a global scale.

Our findings suggest the following conclusions:

• Under a scenario with 1.5°C of warming above preindustrial levels by 2030, almost half of the world’s population could be exposed to a climate hazard related to heat stress, drought, flood, or water stress in the next decade, up from 43 percent today 3 Climate science makes extensive use of scenarios; we have chosen Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 and a multimodel ensemble to best model the full inherent risk absent mitigation and adaption. Scenario 1 consists of a mean global temperature rise of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, which is reached by about 2030 under this RCP; Scenario 2 consists of a mean global temperature rise of 2.0°C above preindustrial levels, reached around 2050 under this RCP. Following standard practice, future estimates for 2030 and 2050 represent average climatic behavior over multidecadal periods: 2030 represents the average of the 2021–2040 period, and 2050 represents the average of the 2041–2060 period. We also compare results with today, also based on multidecadal averages, which differ by hazard. For further details, see technical appendix. —and almost a quarter of the world’s population would be exposed to severe hazards. (For detailed explanations of these hazards and how we define “severe,” see sidebar “A climate risk analysis focused on people: Our methodology in brief.”)
• Indeed, as severe climate events become more common, even in a scenario where the world reaches 1.5°C of warming above preindustrial levels by 2050 rather than 2030, nearly one in four people could be exposed to a severe climate hazard that could affect their lives or livelihoods.
• Climate hazards are unevenly distributed. On average, lower-income countries are more likely to be exposed to certain climate hazards compared with many upper-income countries, primarily due to their geographical location but also to the nature of their economies. (That said, both warming scenarios outlined here are likely to expose a larger share of people in nearly all nations to one of the four modeled climate hazards compared with today.) Those who fall within the most vulnerable categories are also more likely to be exposed to a physical climate hazard.

These human-centric data can help leaders identify the best areas of focus and the scale of response needed to help people—particularly the most vulnerable—build their climate resilience.

A larger proportion of the global population could be exposed to a severe climate hazard compared with today

Under a scenario with 1.5°C of warming above preindustrial levels by 2030, almost half of the world’s population—approximately 5.0 billion people—could be exposed to a climate hazard related to heat stress, drought, flood, or water stress in the next decade, up from 43 percent (3.3 billion people) today.

In much of the discussion below, we focus on severe climate hazards to highlight the most significant effects from a changing climate. We find that regardless of whether warming is limited to 1.5°C or reaches 2.0°C above preindustrial levels by 2050, severe hazard occurrence is likely to increase, and a much larger proportion of the global population could be exposed compared with today (Exhibit 1).

This proportion could more than double, with approximately one in three people likely to be exposed to a severe hazard under a 2.0°C warming scenario by 2050, compared with an estimated one in six exposed today. This amounts to about 2.0 billion additional people likely to be exposed by 2050. Even in a scenario where aggressive decarbonization results in just 1.5°C of warming above preindustrial levels by 2050, the number of people exposed to severe climate hazards could still increase to nearly one in four of the total projected global population, compared with one in six today.

One-sixth of the total projected global population, or about 1.4 billion people, could be exposed to severe heat stress, either acute (humid heat waves) or chronic (lost effective working hours), under a 2.0°C warming scenario above preindustrial levels by 2050, compared with less than 1 percent, or about 0.1 billion people, likely to be exposed today (Exhibit 2).

Our results suggest that both the severity and the geographic reach of severe heat stress may increase to affect more people globally, despite modeled projections of population growth, population shifts from rural to urban areas, and economic migration. Our analysis does not attempt to account for climate-change-related migration or resilience interventions, which could decrease exposure by either forcing people to move away from hot spots or mitigating impacts from severe heat stress.

For those with livelihoods affected by severe chronic heat stress, it could become too hot to work outside during at least 25 percent of effective working hours in any given year. This would likely affect incomes and might even require certain industries to rethink their operations and the nature of workers’ roles. For outdoor workers, extreme heat exposure could also result in chronic exhaustion and other long-term health issues. Heat stress can cause reductions in worker productivity and hours worked due to physiological limits on the human body, as well as an increased need for rest.

We have already seen some of the impacts of acute heat stress in recent years. In the summer of 2010 in Russia, tens of thousands of people died of respiratory illness or heat stress during a large heat-wave event in which temperatures rose to more than 10°C (50°F) higher than average temperatures for those dates. One academic study claims “an approximate 80 percent probability” that the new record high temperature “would not have occurred without climate warming.” 4 Dim Coumou and Stefan Rahmstorf, “Increase of extreme events in a warming world,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) , November 2011, Volume 108, Number 44, pp. 17905–9, pnas.org. To date these impacts have been isolated events, but the potential impact of heat stress on a much broader scale is possible in a 1.5°C or 2.0°C warming scenario in the coming decades.

While we did not assess second-order impacts, they could also be meaningful. Secondary impacts from heat stress may include loss of power, and therefore air conditioning, due to greater stress on electrical grids during acute heat waves, 5 Sofia Aivalioti, Electricity sector adaptation to heat waves , Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University, 2015, academiccommons.columbia.edu. increased stress on hospitals due to increased emergency room visits and admission rates primarily during acute heat-stress events, 6 Climate change and extreme heat events , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015, cdc.gov. and migration driven primarily by impacts from chronic heat stress. 7 Mariam Traore Chazalnoël, Dina Ionesco, and Eva Mach, Extreme heat and migration , International Organization for Migration, United Nations, 2017, environmentalmigration.iom.int.

The rate of growth in global urban water demand is highly likely to outpace that of urban water supply under future warming and socioeconomic pathway scenarios, compared with the overall historical baseline period (1950–2010). In most geographies, this problem is primarily caused not by climate change but by population growth and a corresponding growth in demand for water. However, in some geographies, urban water stress can be exacerbated by the impact of climate change on water supply. In a 2.0°C warming scenario above preindustrial levels by 2050, about 800 million additional people could be living in urban areas under severe water stress compared with today (Exhibit 3). This could result in lack of access to water supplies for drinking, washing and cleaning, and maintaining industrial operations. In some areas, this could make a case for investment in infrastructure such as pipes and desalination plants to make up for the deficit.

Agricultural drought is most likely to directly affect people employed in the agricultural sector: in conditions of anomalously dry soils, plants do not have an adequate water supply, which inhibits plant growth and reduces production. This in turn could have adverse impacts on agricultural livelihoods.

In a scenario with warming 2.0°C above preindustrial levels by 2050, nearly 100 million people—or approximately one in seven of the total global rural population projected to be employed in the agricultural sector by 2050—could be exposed to a severe level of drought, defined as an average of seven to eight drought years per decade. This could severely diminish people’s ability to maintain a livelihood in rainfed agriculture. Additional irrigation would be required, placing further strain on water demand, and yields could still be reduced if exposed to other heat-related hazards.

While our analysis focused on the first-order effects of agricultural drought, the real-world impact could be much larger. Meaningful second-order effects of agricultural drought include reduced access to drinking water and widespread malnutrition. In addition, drought in regions with insufficient aid can cause infectious disease to spread.

Further, although our analysis did not cover food security, many other studies have posited that if people are unable to appropriately adapt, this level of warming would raise the risk of breadbasket failures and could lead to higher food prices. 8 For more on how a changing climate might affect global breadbaskets, see “ Will the world’s breadbaskets become less reliable? ,” McKinsey Global Institute, May 18, 2020.

Primarily as a result of surging demand exacerbated by climate change, 9 Salvatore Pascale et al., “Increasing risk of another Cape Town ‘Day Zero’ drought in the 21st century, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) , November 2020, Volume 117, Number 47, pp. 29495–503, pnas.org. Cape Town, South Africa, a semi-arid country, recently experienced a water shortage. From 2015 to 2018, unusually high temperatures contributed to higher rates of evaporation with less refresh due to low rainfall, contributing to decline in water reserves which fell to the point of emergency 10 “Cape Town’s Water is Running Out,” NASA Earth Observatory, January 14, 2018, earthobservatory.nasa.gov. —by January 2018, about 4.3 million residents of South Africa had endured years of constant restrictions on water use in both urban and agricultural settings. Area farmers recorded losses, and many agricultural workers lost their jobs. In the city, businesses were hit with steep water tariffs, jobs were lost, and residents had to ration water.

Under a scenario with warming 2.0°C above preindustrial levels by 2050, about 400 million people could be exposed to severe riverine or coastal flooding, which may breach existing defenses in place today. As the planet warms, patterns of flooding are likely to shift. This could lead to decreased flood depth in some regions and increases likely beyond the capacity of existing defenses in others.

Riverine floods can disrupt travel and supply chains, damage homes and infrastructure, and even lead to loss of life in extreme cases. The most vulnerable are likely to be disproportionately affected—fragile homes in informal coastal settlements are highly vulnerable to flood-related damages.

This analysis does not account for the secondary impacts of floods that may affect people. In rural areas, floods could cause the salinity of soil to increase, which in turn could damage agricultural productivity. Flooding could also make rural roads impassable, limiting residents’ ability to evacuate and their access to emergency response. Major floods sometimes lead to widespread impacts caused by population displacement, healthcare disruptions, food supply disruptions, drinking-water contamination, psychological trauma, and the spread of respiratory and insect-borne disease. 11 Christopher Ohl and Sue Tapsell, “Flooding and human health: The dangers posed are not always obvious,” British Medical Journal (BMJ) , 2000, Volume 321, Number 7270, pp. 1167–8, bmj.com; Shuili Du, C.B. Bhattacharya, and Sankar Sen, “Maximizing business returns to corporate social responsibility (CSR): The role of CSR communication,” International Journal of Management Reviews (IJMR) , 2010, Volume 12, Number 1, pp. 8–19, onlinelibrary.wiley.com. The severity of these impacts varies meaningfully across geographic and socioeconomic factors. 12 Roger Few et al., Floods, health and climate change: A strategic review , Tyndall Centre working paper, number 63, November 2004, unisdr.org.

People in lower-income countries tend to have higher levels of exposure to hazards

Our analysis suggests that exposure to climate hazards is unevenly distributed. Overall, a greater proportion of people living in lower-income countries are likely to be exposed to one or more climate hazards (Exhibit 4). Under a scenario with warming 2.0°C above preindustrial levels by 2050, more than half the total projected global population could be affected by a climate hazard. On the other hand, only 10 percent of the total population in high-income countries is likely to be exposed. That said, there could also be meaningful increases in overall exposure in developed nations. For example, based on 2050 population projections, about 160 million people in the United States—almost forty percent of the US population—could be exposed to at least one of the four climate hazards in a 2.0°C warming scenario by 2050.

In all, our analysis suggests that nearly twice as many highly vulnerable people (those estimated to have lower income and who may also have inadequate shelter, transportation, skills, or funds to protect themselves from climate risks) could be exposed to a climate hazard (Exhibit 5).

One of the implications of these findings is that certain countries are likely to be disproportionately affected. Two-thirds of the people who could be exposed to a climate hazard in a 2.0°C warming scenario by 2050 are concentrated in just ten countries. In two of these, Bangladesh and Pakistan, more than 90 percent of the population could be exposed to at least one climate hazard.

India’s vulnerability to climate hazards

Today, India accounts for more than 17 percent of the world’s population. In a scenario with 2.0°C warming above preindustrial levels by 2050, nearly 70 percent of India’s projected population, or 1.2 billion people, is likely to be exposed to one of the four climate hazards analyzed in this report, compared with the current exposure of nearly half of India’s population (0.7 billion). India could account for about 25 percent of the total global population likely to be exposed to a climate hazard under a 2.0°C warming scenario by 2050, relative to today.

Just as the absolute number of people likely to be exposed to hazards is increasing, so too is the proportion of people likely to be exposed to a severe climate hazard. Today, approximately one in six people in India are likely to be exposed to a severe climate hazard that puts lives and livelihoods at risk. Using 2050 population estimates and a scenario with 2.0°C warming above preindustrial levels by 2050, we estimate that this proportion could increase to nearly one in two people.

Severe heat stress is the primary culprit of severe climate hazard exposure, potentially affecting approximately 650 million residents of India by 2050 in the 2.0°C warming scenario, compared with just under ten million today (exhibit).

A vast number of people in India could also be exposed. Under a scenario with warming 2.0°C above preindustrial levels by 2050, nearly half of India’s projected population—approximately 850 million—could be exposed to a severe climate hazard. This equates to nearly one-quarter of the estimated 3.1 billion people likely to be exposed to a severe climate hazard globally by 2050 under a 2.0°C warming scenario (see sidebar “India’s vulnerability to climate hazards”).

Between now and 2050, population models 13 “Spatial Population Scenarios,” City University of New York and NCAR, updated August 2018, cgd.ucar.edu. project that the world could gain an additional 1.6 billion people, a proportion of whom are likely to be more exposed, more vulnerable, and less resilient to climate impacts.

For example, much of this population growth is likely to come from urban areas. Urbanization is likely to exacerbate the urban heat-island effect—in which human activities cause cities to be warmer than outlying areas—and humid heat waves could take an even greater toll. Urbanization is likely a driver in increased exposure of populations in coastal and riverine cities.

In India and other less developed economies, water stress is less of a climate problem and more of a socioeconomic problem. Our work and previous work on the topic has shown that increased water stress is mostly due to increases in demand—which is primarily driven by population growth in urban areas.

As labor shifts away from agriculture and other outdoor occupations toward indoor work, fewer people may be exposed to the effects of agricultural drought and heat stress. But on balance, many more people will likely be exposed to climate hazards by 2050 than today under either a 1.5°C or a 2.0°C warming scenario above preindustrial levels.

Many regions of the world are already experiencing elevated warming on a regional scale. It is estimated that 20 to 40 percent of today’s global population (depending on the temperature data set used) has experienced mean temperatures of at least 1.5°C higher than the preindustrial average in at least one season. 14 “Chapter 1: Framing and context,” Special report: Global warming of 1.5°C , International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2018, ipcc.ch.

Mitigation will be critical to minimizing risk. However, much of the warming likely to occur in the next decade has already been “locked in” based on past emissions and physical inertia in the climate system. 15 H. Damon Matthews et al., “Focus on cumulative emissions, global carbon budgets, and the implications for climate mitigation targets,” Environmental Research Letters, January 2018, Volume 13, Number 1. Therefore, in addition to accelerating a path to lower emissions, leaders need to build resilience against climate events into their plans.

Around the world, there are examples of innovative ways to build resilience against climate hazards. For example, the regional government of Quintana Roo on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula insured its coral reefs in an arrangement with an insurance firm, providing incentives for the insurer to manage any degradation, 16 “World’s first coral reef insurance policy triggered by Hurricane Delta,” Nature Conservancy, December 7, 2020, nature.org. and a redesigned levee system put in place after Hurricane Katrina may have mitigated the worst effects of Hurricane Ida for the citizens of New Orleans. 17 Sarah McQuate, “UW engineer explains how the redesigned levee system in New Orleans helped mitigate the impact of Hurricane Ida,” University of Washington, September 2, 2021, washington.edu.

Nonstate actors may have particular opportunities to help build resilience. For instance, insurance companies may be in a position to encourage institutions to build resilience by offering insurance products for those that make the right investments. This can lower reliance on public money as the first source of funding for recovery from climate events. Civil-engineering companies can participate in innovative public–private partnerships to accelerate infrastructure projects. Companies in the agricultural and food sectors can help farmers around the world mitigate the effects that climate hazards can have on food production—for example, offers of financing can encourage farmers to make investments in resilience. The financial-services sector can get involved by offering better financing rates to borrowers who agree to disclose and reduce emissions and make progress on sustainability goals. And, among other actions, all companies can work to make their own operations and supply chains more resilient.

Accelerating this innovation, and scaling solutions that work quickly, could help us build resilience ahead of the most severe climate hazards.

Harry Bowcott is a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office, Lori Fomenko is a consultant in the Denver office, Alastair Hamilton is a partner in the London office, Mekala Krishnan is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) and a partner in the Boston office, Mihir Mysore is a partner in the Houston office, Alexis Trittipo is an associate partner in the New York office, and Oliver Walker is a director at Vivid Economics, part of McKinsey’s Sustainability Practice.

The authors wish to thank Shruti Badri, Riley Brady, Zach Bruick, Hauke Engel, Meredith Fish, Fabian Franzini, Kelly Kochanski, Romain Paniagua, Hamid Samandari, Humayun Tai, and Kasia Torkarska for their contributions to this article. They also wish to thank external adviser Guiling Wang and the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

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• Published: 03 June 2024

Hotspots and trends in health-oriented physical literacy research: a visual analysis based on the WOS database

• Xinyuan Fang 1 &
• Zhen Zhang 1  

BMC Public Health volume  24 , Article number:  1480 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The World Health Organization has proposed that physical activity is a meaningful way to improve the quality of human life and reduce the probability of chronic non-communicable diseases and that humans should change their mindset from the actual effectiveness of physical activity in promoting health to the new view that “physical activity makes life more meaningful.” The introduction and development of physical literacy reveal the critical role of physical activity in improving human health and the importance of human initiative in physical activity for healthy development. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are (1) to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the literature on physical literacy, assessing the scope, frequency, and geographical distribution of research publications from various countries and institutions from 2015 to 2023; (2) to visualize keywords in articles on the topic of Physical literacy to analyze whether there is a link between physical literacy and health, and (3) based on the results of the visual analysis, we propose that proper health is built on the sense of physical literacy and further construct the circular path of physical literacy, physical activity, and physical health improvement.

Using VOSviewer software v.1.6.18, this study searched the core collection of the Web of Science database from 2015 to April 15, 2023, using “physical literacy” as a keyword to explore the current international research on physical literacy.

A total of 3,446 articles were included, and a correlation map was derived based on the co-occurrence frequency of keywords, which showed that physical literacy was highly correlated with six concepts: health literacy, physical activity, health, children, adolescents, and prevention.

Based on the analysis of literature visualization techniques, there is a high correlation between physical literacy and health, and international physical literacy research is in a trend of multi-point amplification, with research hotspots gradually shifting from the field of sports to the field of health and closely related to the field of health, indicating that physical literacy aims to promote the achievement of individual health by driving humans to increase physical activity.

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Introduction

In recent years, the rapid advancement of science and technology has led to the proliferation of automation, networking, and intelligent technologies in all major areas of human life and production [ 1 ]. These technologies gradually replace human physical activities, making a sedentary lifestyle the norm for many professionals and students [ 2 ]. This lack of physical activity has given rise to a global epidemic of physical inactivity disorder. According to the Global Physical Activity Report 2022 by the World Health Organization, 80% of adolescents and 27.5% of adults worldwide do not meet the recommended level of physical activity [ 3 ]. Modern society has trapped humans in a “fast-paced,” “stressful,” and “inactive” lifestyle, leading to frequent physical and mental health issues and a surge in “physical inactivity disorder “ [ 4 ]. This significantly reduces the quality of life and is associated with a range of chronic non-communicable diseases and premature death [ 5 ]. If the current global situation persists, nearly 500 million people are projected to suffer from heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases due to physical inactivity between 2020 and 2030 [ 6 ].

In light of this, the report urges countries to incorporate physical activity into health-related policies as a strategic approach to improving health and tackling chronic diseases. Physical literacy, an emerging field of physical activity research, was reinterpreted by British scholar Whitehead in 1993 from a philosophical basis of phenomenology, existentialism, and embodied cognitive theory. This sparked a global surge in physical literacy research. The rapid spread of “physical literacy” in today’s world is primarily due to its novel approach to addressing the current health crisis that human society is struggling to cope with [ 7 ].

A note of physical literacy

The term “Physical literacy” first appeared in an article published in the American Journal of Health and Physical Education in 1938 [ 8 ]. However, it received little attention throughout the 20th century. In the present age of technology, where machines increasingly replace manual labor and simplify lifestyles, there is a crucial need to contemplate the significance of physical activity. If physical activity is solely considered as a means to promote physical health, there is a risk of overlooking its intrinsic value, particularly for the younger generation, which generally enjoys good physical and mental health [ 9 ]. Consequently, the pressing question of how to integrate physical activity as a “necessity” in daily life and a regular part of routines arises in the 21st century, an era marked by technological transformation [ 10 ]. In response to this question, “physical literacy” has gained prominence. Although the definition of physical literacy varies internationally, it generally aligns with the summary provided by the International Physical Literacy Association (IPLA) in 2017: Physical literacy empowers individuals with the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and engage in physical activity as a lifelong habit [ 11 ]. This perspective attempts to shift from viewing physical activity as a means to an end to a subjective experience that individuals actively integrate into their pursuit of life values, potential development, and quality of life enhancement. By doing so, it aims to counteract the current decline in physical activity among humans and breathe new life into human health.

Physical literacy: a holistic approach to health and well-being

Physical literacy has received widespread academic attention because of its unique value in human physical and mental development. As an instrumental concept, it has led to a change in the thinking of physical education teachers, sports coaches, doctors, and other people concerned about physical and mental health development and influenced the formulation of related policies [ 12 ]. However, due to its complex philosophical basis and the holistic nature of mind-body unity, how physical literacy is promoted through physical activity depends mainly on the current interpretation and application of its concept in the educational community [ 13 ]. Physical literacy challenges the conventional dualism that separates the body from the mind. Instead, it espouses a monistic perspective, asserting the unity of mind and body [ 14 ]. This viewpoint posits that our physical experiences are intrinsically interwoven with our cognitive and emotional states. This monistic stance integral to physical literacy contests the traditional dualistic approach prevalent in education and health, which often segregates physical and mental development into disparate domains, completely marginalizing our body [ 15 ]. By championing the interconnection and mutual dependence of physical and mental facets of human experience, physical literacy fosters a more comprehensive, holistic approach to human development and well-being [ 16 ]. This philosophical underpinning of physical literacy has far-reaching implications for understanding, promoting, and engaging in physical activity [ 17 ]. It implies that physical activity is not merely a means for physical health enhancement but a critical element of overall personal development, cognitive function, emotional well-being, and social engagement. Therefore, the interpretation and application of physical literacy in education and health should embody this monistic philosophy [ 18 ]. It necessitates an educational and healthy approach that equally prioritizes physical and mental development, integrating physical activity into the broader context of personal growth and holistic well-being.

The definition of health has been the subject of extensive scholarly focus. According to the World Health Organization, health encompasses a four-dimensional state comprising physical, mental, social adaptability, and moral perfection. Stainton Rogers proposed that health is synonymous with “right living,” spiritual well-being, and divine care [ 19 ]. On the other hand, Schad defined health as an individual’s lifelong capacity to sustain a perfect life [ 20 ]. Interestingly, older Chinese Americans perceive health as a “balance of yin and yang” [ 21 ]. From the perspective of the British Greeks, health is an individual’s ability to work, perform household chores, and fulfill social obligations [ 22 ]. Mckague conceptualized health as a person’s capacity to meet expectations [ 23 ]. In recent years, an emerging viewpoint links health and well-being, suggesting that health is a state where physically fit individuals can effectively manage events and avoid undesirable states [ 24 ]. This perspective is rooted in a vision of human flourishing. In synthesizing these varied definitions, we contend that the essence of health aligns with the World Health Organization’s proposal of a four-dimensional state of completeness.

The realization of individual health requires attention and practice in schools, and leading students to understand the value of physical activity for physical and mental health is the basis for improving physical literacy and is the key to promoting individuals to develop a lifelong philosophy of physical education [ 25 ]. Schools should lead students to experience the enhancement of physical activity for individual well-being and to gain knowledge and understanding of the principles of holistic health to develop a clear position on the value of physical activity in enhancing overall health and well-being [ 26 ]. There are many aspects to maintaining overall health through physical literacy, including respecting the physical nature of the human condition, monitoring physical and mental well-being, building a balanced life comprised of various interests and activities, and finding a balance between new challenges and existing habits. Starting with a well-founded “standpoint” in the field of movement to understand opportunities can bring significant value in assessing personal well-being and making life choices [ 27 ].

Within the educational community, much of the literature addresses the dangers of physical inactivity disorders from the perspective of physical inactivity, with the most frequent being the serious academic consequences of physical inactivity [ 28 ]. The primary reason for the current social concern about physical health and people’s well-being is that due to the lack of physical activity, related physical activity deficiency disorder diseases are gradually appearing in more and more people, creating enormous financial pressure on the healthcare security systems of various countries [ 29 ]. This expense is borne to a large extent by people’s taxes, leading people into a physical activity deficiency disorder-access to health care-financial stress-taxation-decreased well-being circular path [ 30 ].It is evident that technology-driven society has led to an increasingly severe lack of human physical activity, and the lack of physical activity has a significant impact on human culture, healthcare, finance, education, and other fields [ 31 ], which seriously affects the realization of the vision of human prosperity. Less study based on bibliometric analysis has summarized the research progress of physical literacy from recent decades.

Utilizing bibliometric analysis, a methodology grounded in mathematical and statistical techniques, this study undertook a systematic review of articles pertaining to physical literacy over a span of time. The analysis presents comprehensive data on the countries or institutions producing these articles, co-authorship patterns, and the frequency of keywords crucial for deciphering the hotspots and trends in physical literacy research [ 32 ]. Collaboration among countries, authors, and institutions was scrutinized through tables and graphs to better discern the leading contributors to physical literacy research. This approach aids in comprehending the areas that have made significant progress and contributions. Furthermore, an examination of keywords related to physical literacy was conducted. Finally, publication trends in literature associated with physical literacy were explored using line charts. Through this study, our objective is to offer a more comprehensive and intuitive understanding of the shifts in developmental trends and popular research directions within international physical literacy research. This will serve as a valuable reference for shaping the future direction of physical literacy research.

Search strategy

To ensure the authority and scientific validity of the research subjects, the data source for this analysis was the Web of Science core collection (including SCIE/SSCI/A&HCI and ESCI, etc.) as the data source, which derived from Clarivate Analytics, contains more than 12,000 international academic journals and is recognized as a comprehensive and authoritative database [ 33 ].The data search strategy was as follows: (1) Subject="Physical literacy”; (2) Document type= (review or article); (3) Language="English”; (4) Search date = From January 1, 2015 to April 15, 2023. All data were obtained on April 15, 2023. A thematic search was used to balance accuracy and completeness, and a total of 3,439 documents were extracted. VOSviewer software v.1.6.18. was used to analyze the sample literature in order to obtain the evolutionary relationship between hotspots and trends in physical literacy research. For better use in VOSviewer analysis, this study exported the documents as Plain Text File with Record Content of Authors, Title, Source, Times Cited Count, Accession Number, and Abstract. The processing parameters were set as follows: annual interval 2015–2023, time slice of 1 year, and thematic sources as full citations and citation references.

About text preprocessing

VOSviewer software emerges as a robust tool for bibliometric analysis, boasting unique features that negate the necessity for extensive data preprocessing. Its strength lies in the seamless integration of the VOS mapping technique and an advanced viewer into a single, user-friendly computer program. With a distinct emphasis on graphical representation, VOSviewer offers an intuitive display for large bibliometric maps, as demonstrated in constructing a co-citation map involving 5,000 major scientific journals [ 34 , 35 ]. Notably, its efficiency in capturing current trends in science and technology surpasses traditional methods, evidenced by the swift analysis of articles, papers, and patents. Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman extensively explore the program’s functionality and technical intricacies in their respective papers [ 36 ].

Furthermore, VOSviewer’s inclusion of text mining functionality empowers users to analyze extensive textual data efficiently. Despite encountering some missing values and minimal anomalies, a deliberate decision was made to forgo data preprocessing, aiming to preserve the raw state of the data for a more authentic representation of real-world scenarios. Acknowledging the potential impact of unprocessed data on experiment results, this approach is chosen to provide a more genuine perspective on physical literacy in our study. This decision aligns with VOSviewer’s capabilities, making it a versatile and comprehensive tool for researchers and analysts in bibliometrics.

Date analysis

In analyzing the data, we evaluated the following aspects: (1) Country and institution of publication, analyzing the current status of international research on the topic by country and institution of publication; (2) Years of publication, highlighting the focus of the literature at different time points; (3) Concentration of keywords in the articles, highlighting the most frequently used keywords in the article collection; (4) Authors with the most published articles and the nationality of the authors; (5) WOS categories, analyzing the yearly trend of the literature on the topic of “physical literacy” and the correlation coefficient. (6) WOS categories, analyzing the publishers, publishers, and journals; (7) The annual trend of publications on the theme of “physical literacy” and the correlation coefficient analysis.

Country & institution analysis

The country was selected as the node type and ran to obtain a network map of the current international geographic contributions to physical literacy-related research. In the knowledge map, the size of the circle represents the citation history of the topic, and the larger the circle is, the higher the frequency of the topic’s appearance. First, regarding country analysis in Figs.  1 and 2 , the highest number of articles was 1,070 in the United States, 439 in Australia, 343 in Canada, and 270 in the United Kingdom. In terms of article relevance, the highest U.S., Canada, UK. In summary of the data the United States and the United Kingdom have more significant research on physical literacy and stronger correlations between them, indicating that the two countries have more theoretical and practical achievements in physical literacy research. From the analysis of its theoretical level, the theory of physical literacy was laid by the British scholar Whitehead from the philosophical level. The US research-related theories are primarily based on Whitehead’s theory of physical literacy. At the same time, Canada and Australia have developed many physical literacy assessment tools related to CAPL and PFL, which undoubtedly triggered the research enthusiasm of scholars in related fields.

Country co-existence time analysis map

Country co-existence map

In terms of the institutions that publish articles in Figs.  3 and 4 , higher education institutions are the main force of physical literacy-related research, concentrated in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other developed countries’ top universities, mainly including the University of Sydney, Deakin University, Stanford University, Columbia University, Newcastle University, Flinders University, University of California, University of Ottawa and so on. These universities have a medical and sports science-based. The authors of these articles are primarily students or faculty members of these two fields of study.

Issuing institutions time map

Issuing institutions co-current map

Keyword co-occurrence analysis

Keyword co-occurrence map

Keywords are usually the core content and methodological refinement of a paper, and the frequency of keywords in a field can visually reflect the distribution of research hotspot directions centered on that topic. The keyword network map of current physical literacy-related research was run by selecting the node types as keywords in Fig.  5 ; Table  1 . It can be seen that among the current literature on “physical literacy”, international research mainly focuses on adults, adolescents, and children, including health literacy, health, physical activity, exercise, prevention, behavioral habits, literacy, and other aspects. The time zone analysis chart more clearly shows the evolutionary path of the hotspots of physical literacy research. Although the formal definition of physical literacy is concise, its theoretical research has developed very fast, from the early focus on children and adolescents’ physical activity to the gradual development of individual physical literacy through education and the proliferation of the curriculum, policies, measurement tools, skills and knowledge, after which physical literacy is often associated with issues such as health levels, motivation, public health, physical activity deficit disorder, and human flourishing. Physical literacy and human health have recently become an emerging trend in international scholarship. In terms of changes in research hotspots, over time, research on physical literacy has seen a shift from a focus on individual motor skills to a focus on human health, and overall, physical literacy has become increasingly relevant to physical health as an essential literacy for human health.

Main authors and number of citations

Figure  6 ; Table  2 show the authors who have published more papers in “Physical Literacy”: Tremblay, Mark S. and Longmuir, Patricia E. from Canada with 23 and 24 papers, respectively, and Cairney, John from Australia with 36 papers. From the figure and table, we can learn the number of articles published by the first author of the paper and the number of citations to the article.

The first author of the article co-presents the figure

WOS categories

In the WOS core collection, all literature is divided into 191 categories, of which health and wellness is the category with the most significant number of articles (750), followed by education and teaching research (571), sports science (302), and health care science services (246). Table  3 shows, in addition to the categories with the highest number of articles, the journals and publishers with the highest number of papers published under the title “physical literacy.” The journal with the most articles was the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, with 147 articles. In contrast, the publisher with the highest number of articles was Springer Nature, with 498 articles.

Annual publication trends

Trends in publications

Through the WOS core database, we found 3,446 articles published from 2015 to April 15, 2023, with 2022 being the most published year, with 686 articles published on “physical literacy.” Since 2015, the literature on “physical literacy” has shown an exponential increase with a fit rate of R²=96.74% in Fig.  7 .

This study aimed to analyze current international trends in physical literacy and research hotspots to provide a comprehensive and practical review to the scientific community in a visual manner. A bibliometric study of articles on physical literacy revealed that research on physical literacy and health has evolved rapidly from establishment to emergence. The various definitions of health provide a broad context, yet the concept of physical literacy, a critical aspect of overall health, still needs to be more adequately explored. Although Cairney constructed a circular argument framework based on health, physical literacy, and physical activity, physical literacy has yet to receive much attention [ 37 ]. This may be because the term “health literacy” has been commonly used in the academic community to describe the ability of individuals to maintain their physical health actively. Physical literacy is believed to be considered health literacy in the medical field [ 38 ]. Therefore, this study analyzes the relationship between “Physical literacy” and “Health literacy”. Based on these analyses, we investigate the concept of physical literacy as a meaningful concept based on physical activity and further argue for the circular enhancement pathway of health, physical literacy, and physical activity proposed by Cairney et al.

General information study

The upward trajectory of scholarly output on physical literacy since 2015, peaking in 2022, underscores the burgeoning interest within the academic community. Predominantly, developed nations such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom have been at the forefront of this discourse, as depicted in Fig.  1 . The United States, in particular, exhibits a robust interconnection with international research efforts, signifying its pivotal role in advancing physical literacy scholarship. Regarding institutional contributions, a concentration of seminal work emanates from developed countries, with prestigious entities like the University of Sydney, Deakin University, Stanford University, and Columbia University leading the charge. This confluence of geographic and institutional provenance indicates that developed nations have established a significant lead in physical literacy research, outpacing their counterparts in the developing world, where research in this area is emerging and needs augmentation.

The disparity in research output can largely be attributed to the superior financial and infrastructural provisions available in developed countries, which foster environments rich in high-caliber research institutions, cutting-edge laboratory facilities, and comprehensive funding opportunities for physical activity research. Conversely, developing nations often grapple with resource allocation challenges, necessitating prioritization of immediate societal needs such as infrastructure over research endeavors. Moreover, the academic milieu in developed countries is inherently conducive to generating high-quality research, bolstered by a tradition of frequent academic discourse and international collaborations that enhance both the caliber and the innovative potential of scholarly work on physical literacy.

An analysis of the 3,439 articles published reveals that the top five journals account for 337 publications, representing approximately 11% of the total volume. John Cairney stands out as the most prolific author in the field, extensively exploring the interconnections between physical literacy, health, and physical activity, often employing a cyclical argumentative structure to encapsulate these interdependencies. The International Journal of Physical Literacy and Physical Activity is a frequent publisher in this domain. Meanwhile, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health boasts the highest publication frequency (0.4%), reflecting a health-centric journal’s predilection for physical literacy topics, corroborated by the keyword analysis in Fig.  5 ; Table  1 . The analysis confirms a robust association between the literature on physical literacy and health-related themes, providing insights into the evolving trends and focal areas within the field. In the subsequent sections, the focus will be on the relationship between physical literacy and health.

Physical literacy and physical activity

The development of physical literacy allows participation in lifelong physical activity through improved motor skills and cognitive-emotional abilities [ 39 ]. From a biological perspective, life is how living things exist in the world, and as social beings, individual lives cannot meet the needs of social life. Therefore, to view life from the perspective of physical literacy is to perceive the world in terms of physical activity, to experience the meaning of life, and to relish it. Physical activity is ubiquitous in life; life is the basis of life, and the integrity and health of life depend on the subjective activities of human beings. Physical activity is the basis for human beings to achieve freedom and comprehensive development of life [ 40 ].

At present, the educational concept that physical literacy can effectively promote the healthy growth of youth and that physical activity can make life more meaningful has become a global consensus [ 41 ]. However, physical activity is not synonymous with childhood nor an exclusive term in education, but it is all those human beings do in their daily lives. Physical literacy plays a significant role in human beings’ lifelong physical participation and healthy development [ 42 ]. As actual human beings, we need to see ourselves as an existential whole, which is, in essence, how we interact with the world, that is, when the more physically active we are, the better we perceive the world [ 43 ], physical literacy provides a rational explanation for physical activity, and technological developments in contemporary society have increased the demand for physical activity, and a study has shown that An effective way to improve the level of physical literacy is to reduce the amount of sedentary time [ 44 ], this is because, while physical activity was once used to meet the needs of material life, physical activity nowadays is more about improving the quality of human life in terms of spiritual life, and although the human civilization system constructed by modern society has cultivated the inner qualities of rationality and solidarity, it has also to some extent suppressed the instinct of human beings as animals, which is the ability to be strong through physical skills to demonstrate muscular physique, proficiency, and thus spiritual satisfaction [ 45 ]. Physical literacy, as a lifelong concept, is proposed not only for the healthy growth of youth but also for the vision of prosperity of all human beings; its essence is the development of the individual and the realization of personal potential through physical activity to promote social development. Therefore, this section analyzes how physical literacy and physical activity are developed based on the elaboration of the role of physical literacy in the whole life cycle [ 20 ].

As can be seen from Table  4 , physical literacy, as a concept covering the whole life cycle, has different training modes and influencing factors at different ages. The training process of physical literacy is not an overnight process but a continuous process [ 46 ]. Based on monistic physical literacy, the concept of well-being from the perspective of the whole person is upheld. Exercise mode, mental skills for self-management, and basic health and nutrition knowledge are taken as essential components to achieve physical and mental health [ 47 ]. When carrying out physical activities, every movement must go through the procedure of “perceiving the world-processing information. Therefore, developing physical literacy is realized through constant autonomous human activity, a cognitive process in which we perceive the world through our bodies and judge it through our minds [ 48 ].

Physical activity and physical health

Guiding humans to understand the impact of physical inactivity on physical health remains the most significant challenge for the public health community today [ 49 ]. The World Health Organization has proposed that health is a four-dimensional state of physical, mental, social adaptability, and moral perfection, and whether the definition of health needs to be redefined for better understanding and use under new social conditions, physical activity provides a suitable explanation for health [ 50 ]. In 21st-century society, human beings are gradually domesticated by technology, and society is characterized by technological and instrumental rationality. Developed countries, led by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, have been more severely affected by technology, with the United States experiencing a 32% decline in national physical activity from 1965 to 2009 and emerging countries rapidly following in its footsteps, with China experiencing a 45% decline in national physical activity from 1991 to 2009 [ 6 ].

The Lancet states that as of 2022, global progress in promoting physical activity remains stagnant, with more than 5 million deaths yearly due to physical inactivity [ 51 ]. The neglect of physical activity has led to the trivialization and even denial of physical education that promotes physical and mental health, weakening individual subjectivity and adversely affecting physical, mental, social interactions, and spiritual pursuits. The health benefits of appropriate physical activity, including reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, are well established [ 52 ]. Obesity, now the most prevalent disease in the world, arose from excessive energy intake and reduced energy expenditure, corresponding to unhealthy dietary habits and chronic physical inactivity, respectively [ 53 ]. It is now established that physical activity effectively reduces the risk of obesity [ 54 ]. It has been shown that dietary habits are associated with sedentary behavior, which is defined as static physical activity with low energy expenditure in a sitting, lying, or supine position, and that chronic sedentary behavior also increases the probability of non-communicable diseases and the risk of death, with sedentary time exceeding eight hours per day increasing mortality by nearly 8% [ 50 ]. The literature shows that active physical activity is strongly correlated with physical health and that regular physical activity is essential to achieving human health and improving quality of life [ 55 ].

At the same time, recent studies have reported that at least 20 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day can reduce the prevalence of cardiovascular disease in adults by 16–40% [ 56 , 57 ] and that a physically inactive an active lifestyle will increase the likelihood of chronic non-communicable diseases and increase the risk of cancer, which together raise the risk of death [ 58 ]. An American College of Sports Medicine created a physical activity guide chart for different populations based on the intensity and frequency of physical activity, aiming to promote the development of national physical activity habits and the level of national physical health through this guide [ 59 ]. The level of physical activity determined the mental health of individuals, with higher intensity of daily physical activity being associated with higher mental health scores in subjects [ 60 ]. From the literature related to physical activity and physical health, it is clear that physical activity is a determinant of physical health. If a person misses physical activity, he will be unhealthy or subhealthful [ 50 ]. This can redefine the concept of health from the perspective of physical literacy. That is, health is a complete state based on physical, mental, and social adaptability and morality based on physical activity. The overall improvement of physical literacy can lead to higher physical quality and a healthier lifestyle, thus achieving comprehensive physical and mental health development [ 61 ]. Recently, Japanese scholar INOUE Kosuke proposed a 14.9% reduction in all-cause mortality in people who performed 1–2 walks of 8000 steps or more per week and a 16.5% reduction in the risk of all-cause mortality in people who took 8000 steps or more 3–7 days per week based on 10-year-long follow-up data [ 62 ].

German scholar Lars Gabrys et al. suggested that long-term physical activity could improve cardiometabolic health, while abrupt interruptions in regular physical activity would increase the incidence of cardiometabolic disease [ 63 ]. Therefore, understanding physical activity as a determinant of health within this concept of health will be vital to developing effective interventions targeting public health [ 64 ]. Good levels of physical literacy are strongly correlated with maintaining a high frequency of physical activity, with physical literacy being a key indicator of promoting physical activity and health levels in secondary school students to help them maintain an active lifestyle [ 65 ]. A recent study by Caldwell et al. demonstrated that the determinants of physical health in adolescents are their possession of high levels of physical literacy, that these adolescents have a better quality of life, and that promoting physical health through physical activity helps them maintain a low risk of prevalence of chronic non-communicable diseases in the long run [ 66 ]. Another study showed a negative correlation between the intensity of physical activity and individual BMI. Those who are regularly physically active also have the initiative in body image management [ 67 ].

Physical health and physical literacy

Physical literacy describes “the value and responsibility of an individual’s motivation, confidence, ability, knowledge, and understanding of lifelong physical activity” [ 68 ], which is based on physical activity and integrates physical cognition and experience. Physical literacy holds a unique significance in promoting physical health, enabling individuals with proficient physical literacy to address existing health issues through physical activity and prevent the onset of diseases. In the discourse surrounding physical literacy, it is posited that its ultimate purpose is to cultivate individuals who are both healthy and holistically developed, thereby maximizing human potential [ 69 ]. The concept of physical literacy embraces the diversity of physical activities, acknowledging that not all are explicitly aimed at health outcomes. For instance, although fundamentally functional or mechanical, occupational tasks and everyday activities are pivotal in realizing value and engaging with the world as individuals interact with their environment [ 70 ]. Value is realized in mechanistic or functional physical activities. Within the framework of physical literacy, health-oriented physical activities should not be perceived as a coercive health-centric agenda. Instead, it fosters a comprehensive perspective on physical activity, recognizing multiple dimensions and benefits, with health being just one of many. The conception of health promoted by physical literacy aligns with the pursuit of human flourishing, where even mechanical or functional work is seen as an opportunity to enhance physical capabilities, confidence, and motivation. Physical activity is not solely a pursuit of health but is a pursuit of true freedom by humans as advanced intellectual animals. Physical literacy fosters a sense of bodily freedom, enabling us to navigate the world, interact with others, and fully participate in the variegated experiences of humanity [ 71 ]. Hence, mechanistic or functional physical activities are not the focus of physical literacy. Our bodies evolved to thrive in diverse environments, and advancing human technology aims to achieve greater freedom, not diminishing physical activity [ 2 ]. Our well-being is contingent on the diverse challenges and contexts within the world, and it is through engaging in these physical activities we find meaning in life and fulfill the ultimate aim of physical literacy [ 72 ].

The keyword co-occurrence shows that “health literacy” still appears more frequently in the literature on “physical literacy” because health literacy has been proposed earlier. However, there is a lack of “physical activity” transformation into “fitness activity.” This is because health literacy was introduced earlier but lacks the process of transforming “physical activity” into “fitness activity,” so physical literacy is different from health literacy in Fig.  8 . Chinese scholars such as Zhou Wansheng distinguished the connotation and relationship between physical literacy and health literacy from the perspective of sports ontology, pointing out that physical literacy comes from embodied human beings, which is the unity of body, mind, cognition, and behavior, and is used to describe the physical activities that human beings have to perform throughout their lives. In contrast, health literacy comes from the health education model established by human beings to promote health. Its fundamental purpose is to cultivate healthy human beings [ 73 ]. However, the ultimate purpose of physical literacy is to cultivate physically healthy and well-rounded people. Physical literacy and health literacy are interrelated, mutually influencing, and promoting each other rather than being separate individuals [ 74 ].

Physical literacy and health literacy

For many years, the Western world has been influenced by the Cartesian mind-body dichotomy, where physical activity has become less and less important, and sport is seen as a tool to achieve other purposes [ 75 ]. However, a growing body of research suggests that physical and mental development is integrated and that physical activity contributes to brain development during adolescence, where adolescents experience the world and enhance their perception of it through physical activity while also being able to develop basic motor patterns [ 14 ], which can be developed to lay the foundation for higher levels of physical activity and provide a great contribution to a full and high quality of life [ 76 ].

Therefore, the embodied and motor nature of humans is a critical pathway for our interaction with the world [ 77 ]. Developing physical literacy is fostering human initiative and stimulating individual potential, as well as developing individual self-esteem, self-confidence, and other abilities that have a positive correlation with attitudes toward physical activity [ 78 ], people with higher self-confidence and self-awareness will maintain a more positive attitude toward physical activity, physical literacy is intrinsic to life development, and there is growing evidence that the earlier the level of physical literacy is developed The more beneficial it is for physical activity in later life [ 14 ], a physical literacy development program in the United States that students should be provided with activities that are appropriate for them and allow them to feel the process of activity rather than the outcome [ 63 ], physical literacy is based on existentialism, phenomenology, and mind-body monism as theoretical foundations, and in recent years, physical literacy has been gradually viewed as an indirect factor of health, existential physical literacy, physical activity, physical health pathway, where improved physical literacy leads to more physical activity, and people with good physical literacy continuously engage in physical activity, resulting in positive physical, psychological, and social adaptations that improve individual physical health [ 37 ], based on Whitehead’s definition of physical literacy, physical literacy is true at all ages in humans [ 79 ], from infancy to old age, Hilary A.T., Caldwell et al. verified that physical literacy has a positive correlation with health through a combination of PLAY fun, PLAY self, and PLAY parent [ 80 ], and in Canada, children who met Canada’s own physical activity guidelines showed In Canada, children who met Canada’s national physical activity guidelines showed better fitness, motivation, and confidence [ 81 ], which could prove the purpose of physical literacy, which was proposed to reverse the current decline in human physical activity and to make life more meaningful and address the “existential crisis” people are currently facing [ 7 ].

Our study aims to comprehensively and intuitively map the evolving landscape of international physical literacy research, offering valuable guidance for future research trajectories in this area. By visualizing the data, this study found that since 2015, the trend of exponential growth of articles on the topic of “physical literacy” and the increasing trend of research on physical literacy for health indicates that the international scientific community is increasingly interested in the research on “physical literacy and is gradually exploring the possibility of promoting human health through physical activity and changing the current trend of declining quality of life. This indicates the international scientific community’s growing interest in “physical literacy” and the progressive exploration of physical activity to promote human health and change the declining quality of life. Regarding the sources of the articles, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, BMC Public Health, BMJ Open, and Journal of Medical Internet Research, the most significant number of articles was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, with more than 45 articles. Regarding the keywords of the articles, these papers mainly focused on physical activity, physical literacy, and health literacy, and the number of occurrences of these three keywords was 740, 608, and 258, respectively.

It is evident that physical literacy, as an emerging concept, has become a growing and crucial topic. In recent years, physical literacy has emerged as a scene to discuss the relevance of physical activity and health, to discuss that developing physical literacy can improve various domains (physical, cognitive, mental, and emotional) in which individuals participate in physical activity so that through the improvement of individual physical literacy they can better feel the pleasure and meaningfulness, increasing human confidence in performing physical activity, and thus increasing human attitudes toward having a more active and healthy lifestyle. However, the country mapping shows that the current research on physical literacy is more in developed countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, etc. Most countries have studied physical literacy late and have not combined physical literacy with physical health, or some countries have only used physical literacy to study specific groups (elderly, disabled), which is contrary to physical literacy as an ability that all human beings have. This is contrary to the ability of physical literacy as a human individual. Based on the above, this study further demonstrates a circular pathway between physical literacy, physical health, and physical activity based on previous research.

Despite the insights this study provides into the research hotspots and trends in physical literacy, several limitations exist. This study is confined to the WOS core collection, and while extensive, our analysis may need to be more comprehensive. Secondly, our research is limited to articles written in English as the writing language. Thirdly, the study does not take into account the quality of the publications, a factor that could have an impact on the results. Finally, although the VOSviewer is a professional bibliometric analysis software tool that provides objective analysis, there may be some subjective deviation as researchers may have different perceptions and interpretations of the same content.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Xinyuan Fang and Zhen Zhang conceived and designed the study. Xinyuan Fang wrote the entire manuscript, and Zhen Zhang provided the results of the visualization analysis. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Fang, X., Zhang, Z. Hotspots and trends in health-oriented physical literacy research: a visual analysis based on the WOS database. BMC Public Health 24 , 1480 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18951-7

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Received : 15 May 2023

Accepted : 24 May 2024

Published : 03 June 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18951-7

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