Web Statistics-Getting Info from Your Website
Sean Kelley
I have met a lot of clients, big and small, and talked to them about their websites. It is amazing at how many organizations have no idea what is going on with their website. I am not talking about who’s handling it, or what is posted on the site; I’m talking about who is going there? What are they trying to find? How they’re finding the site? Simple web statistics are not being monitored. They either don’t have tools installed on the site, or they do but they don’t look at them consistently. It’s the billboard mentality. I am sure that a billboard vendor can provide statistics on how many people drive down the Beltline during a given day, but they don’t know much more than that-maybe they do. Yet, organizations spend big bucks on outdoor advertising.
I love to talk about a small client of ours. They own a small retail store in a small, local community. We did their site and installed Google Analytics. Let’s face it, it’s a great tool and it’s free. Yes free. We gave the site 3 months to get crawled by Google and then looked at their statistics for them. We realized that much of their online traffic was coming to their site on Sundays. Their business hours were basically Monday through Friday, standard retail business hours. We asked them if they ever considered being open on Sundays, even if it was for limited hours. They had not, but were open to trying it given the information that their website, and visitors, provided to them. They opened a few hours on Sundays and soon realized that 65% of their weekly sales came in on Sundays! They now realize how valuable that information was and adapted to what their customers wanted.
So ask yourself, where is your website traffic coming from? How long do they stay on your site? What information is your web visitor looking for? Are they finding it? What search terms are they using to find your site? Does your company handle purple widgets but visitors are looking for yellow? Maybe visitors end up going to your competition for yellow widgets. Wouldn’t it be nice to offer yellow widgets, especially if the cost is low and the demand is there? Information is powerful. Gather that information and use it to improve your business now. If you don’t, your competition will.
