Web Analytics

It is very important for organizations to closely monitor website usage patterns.  A good understanding of website visitors help organizations maximize the promotion and sale of their goods and services.

There is little point investing in a website and paying monthly web hosting fees if your website in not achieving the its intended objectives.

Web hosting companies sometimes include free web analytics software in their web hosting packages.  Analytics software can also be obtained from third parties such as Google (Google Analytics).

Web analytic software ranges from very simple tools that simply display basic information from web server logs to highly sophisticated software providing a wealth of information.

The best business intelligence (BI) applications available today can slice, dice, summarize and present large volumes of data in understandable tables and graphs.

Web analytic software can answer important questions such as:

1. How many people come to my website (e.g. date range, time period)?
2. How do people find my business website (e.g. enter URL, search engine)?
3. Which search engines do visitors use (e.g. Bing, Google, Yahoo)?
4. Which keywords are used to find my website?
5. Where do my online visitors come from (e.g. country, region)?
6. What are the main entry and exit pages (e.g. home page, other pages)?
7. How do visitor navigate my website (e.g. home page -> page 1 -> exit)?
8. How long do website visitors remain on my site (e.g. time duration)?
9. What portion of visitors return to my site?
10. Do visitors submit submit information requests (i.e. e-forms, e-mails)?
11. Do visitors make online purchases?  How much do they spend?

Using this business intelligence (BI), small businesses can make informed decision to:

1. Expand the most popular areas of the site; phase out other areas.
2. Identify why web pages are not found/visited (design, content or technical issues).
3. Identify "key words" that do well in search engines; refine site text.
4. Identify customer segments that make purchases (countries, regions)
5. Identify and resolve website navigation issues; make changes.
6. Identify and address web hosting issues (e.g. downtime, slow response)

If your web hosting package doesn't include adequate web analytic software, consider using a third party product such as Google Analytics.  By simply entering a few lines of code on each web page, your small business can benefit from a wealth of business intelligence.  Google Analytics, by the way, is available free of charge.