Do you have a successful website?

What is web analytics software?

First of all a web analytics software will trace the behaviour of the website users. The software will pick the useful data from the website to determine which aspects works towards the business' goals and objectives.

A wide choice of various software packages is out there such as Omniture, WebTrend, WebSideStory, Click Tracks, Visual Science and Google Analytics (free of charge).

What does the software tell?

Web analytics software will improve your websites efficiency and its success online, like more sales or leads, increase the ROI (Return on investment) or decrease your online marketing costs:

• Website Traffic Reports: help to understand the users of a website, where they are from, how long they stay, which pages they visit ...
  

• Key Performance Indicator or Dashboard: closely monitor the KPIs of the online activities and  let them guide you to to improve the website or the marketing campaign

Possible KPIs: Number of visits, Pageviews, Pages/Visit, Bounce Rates, Average time on site, New Visits, Goals and Conversions.

Understand the KPIs of your online business

It is important to keep an eye on the KPIs you have selected as even simple changes on the website or activities can thrive your statistics crazy.

Lets assume the visits to your company's website have increased by 20% from August to September. Looked at this on its own is a pretty good performance. But think twice - should you really start celebrating? What is the consequence - your companies main aim? Can you expect more signed contracts, more newsletter subscriptions, or leads? There is more to it - if we look at the bounce rate which indicates an increase to 85% - a rather high number of users looking at only one page.