By Tammy Elizabeth Southin
You have a small business, and you have the Web site; now what? If you are not selling items directly through your site, you might be wondering if those uncluttered pages with the right amount of graphics are being read or being ignored. Do Web analytics matter to your business if you don't have an ecommerce site?
In a sense, every business Web site is an ecommerce site; some are just more direct than others. Selling widgets through your site means quantifiable measurements that are easy to analyze. But if you sell a service or your site is there primarily for informational purposes, what can Web analytics do for you?
Web analytics are great tools and gadgets that either come with your Web hosting plan or can be added in from outside sources. Some Web analytics are free, and all are valuable in maximizing your Web site potential.
Number of Visitors to Your Web Site
Numbers alone look great, but try not to get too caught up in the excitement of seeing hundreds or thousands of hits. Remember those friends and relatives you begged to visit your site? Plus your visitors could arrive at your site thinking that they are heading somewhere else, but end up landing at your Web site and immediately move elsewhere. A good Web analytics program tells you how long a visitor stayed, and average number of pages viewed per visitor—measures of actual engagement with the site.
Pageviews and Click Data
Web analytics let you know which Web pages are most visited and how many clicks are calculated per visit. Is the product benefit page reeling in Internet surfers, or is it the about us page? Which pages are making the most of our SEO copy? You can also tell how much time readers are spending on your site as they click through.
Where Visitors Come From
Web analytic tools tell you where your visitors are coming from. If your target market is your local area, but visitors are from Southeast Asia, you need to rethink your marketing strategy and focus on promoting your Web site to your target market.
How Do Visitors Get to Your Page?
Discover which search engines are bringing your visitors to your Web site. Increase your Web presence through engine listing and linking to the appropriate social media outlets for business networking. Maximize your search engine ratings with the right amount of SEO copy that will appeal to and attract your target clients.
Web analytics help all small business owners by providing regular snapshots of the traffic to your site. Measuring your marketing efforts through your Web presence is an important part of making the most of your small business Web site. Learn how to track those offline conversions: Read "Find Your Web Site's True ROI."
About the Author
Tammy Elizabeth Southin is President and Creative Director of Insurepronews Creative Solutions Inc., which proudly provides customized insurance newsletter solutions exclusively for insurance brokers, especially using technology to communicate with their clients.