- Understanding Web Analytics
- Why Analyze Website Traffic?
- Who Uses Web Analytics?
- How Web Analytics Works
- Beyond Data Collection: Using Web Analytics Data
- Web Analytics and Internet Advertising
- Understanding Key Metrics
- Getting to Know Google Analytics
- Summary
Beyond Data Collection: Using Web Analytics Data
It may be interesting to know how many people visit your site each month, as well as what sites drove the most traffic to yours, but how can you put this data to good use?
The key is to analyze the data about what happened in the past to both predict and influence what happens in the future. That is, you can use web analytics data to make informed decisions about your website strategy.
Examine the data to determine what is and isn't working on your site; then use that information to play up your site's strengths and improve its weaknesses. If you know, for example, that a particular page is pulling a lot of traffic from Google and other search engines, you expand on that page's content to attract even more of that traffic. Or if you determine that visitors are leaving too soon after viewing a given page—that is, if there's nothing there to keep them sticking around—you can work to improve that page's content to be more valuable to visitors.