Web site owners take note – if you’re not checking your site analytics you’re probably losing opportunities!

That’s right, you’re not paying attention to your customers. Web site analytics can tell you quite a lot about your site’s visitors. Do you check your analytics? Do you even know what they are? First some explanation about analytics, then a bit about how to use the information they contain to your advantage. Let us know how you’re driving your traffic!!

As a web site owner, you should have access to your web site analytics from your web hosting company. If your hosting company doesn’t offer a package such as AWStats or something similar, you should have your developer integrate Google Analytics into your site. Google Analytics is available from Google for free and you may email yourself the stats weekly in case you’re the forgetful type. You may notice discrepancies between the results you receive from Google Analytics and those from a logfile analytics package such as AWStats – and that difference is due to how the data is gathered. I can explain more of that later if anyone is interested, but suffice to say – some info is always better than no info!

Now that you’re got some sort of web site statistics available to you – what do the data mean and how can you use your new found knowledge? First, analytics gives you the chance to look at your site through the eyes of your prospective customer.

Let’s take this one step at a time. First you’ll need a free Google Analytics account. Create a new profile by inputting your web site address (for this site it would be www.lostinclover.com). Google will provide a “tracking code” that you will copy to each of your site web pages. You just cut and paste the code on your page directly above the </body> tag. Use the new tracking code unless your web developer tell you they need the old tracking code. Once you’ve copied the code, press finish and you’ll see the web site profiles you have set up. You’ll notice that your new site will say “Tracking not installed” and there will be a link below that says “check status.” If you click the link, you’ll be redirected to the page listing your tracking codes again. Once you’ve properly installed your code, the status will change to “waiting for data.” This means that Google has found your tracking code and is monitoring your web site. It should take about a day for you to receive your first report. Remember, Google data is not real time – you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for today’s data. If that’s not acceptable, you’ll need to invest in real-time tracking software for your web site.

Next time, we’ll start looking at your new data and make sense of what you see!