Alan DraperDo you remember looking at a Web page and seeing a counter with white numbers perched in the corner? For the most part, during the mid-1990s the measurement was what many Web statisticians had to analyze. These numbers tallied how many people came to look at a website. This little counter was the dawn of Web analytics. This new tool originally helped IT staff locate broken links and troublesome spots on a business’ website, but marketers took over when they saw the information raked in profits when a few tweaks were made.
Web analytics studies site visitors’ behavior. It answers the who, what, where, why and when about your site’s visitors. This tool enables you to determine whether the visitor is human or an automated program combing the web. It can help find out which keywords or phrases were used to find the site; the length of time the visitor was on your site; specific areas visited; and the partners, operating systems and browsers used to get to the site.
This knowledge lets businesses rearrange or adjust content offerings, identify trends and show the effectiveness of promotions and sales, and it lets them strategize with partners.
The two significant benefits this tool provides are the ability to strategize and eliminate errors. Businesses can identify new approaches to sell products and services and further identify innovative ways to stand out from other websites and competitors. They can also find problems preventing customers from making purchases.
Visitors to a site need to feel comfortable as they navigate through its pages. Their ease equates to dollars spent on products and services. Today, Web analytics provides businesses with more relevant and clear data that yields more outcomes. They have a better ability to understand the reasons surrounding a visitor’s attraction.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
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I have been in the business world for more years than I would like to admit, and the adage, “What gets measured, gets done” is true, true, true. If you don’t have some kind of benchmark, you don’t know if you are trending up, down or sideways. We offer a great website analytic tool called Weblinx Site tracker, powered by Visistat. Visit http://www.interlinxassociates.com/weblinx/index.html and try it. We have a 30 day free trial. I firmly believe if you don’t have some kind of analytics on your site, you are flying blind with one of the most important communication tools you have–your Website.