Comments on: Who Is Visiting our Site, Why, And What We Do About It

By: Best Web Design Trends For Small Business In 2010 | Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:08:24 +0000

[...] Websites without analytics is like running a business without accounting. Websites will focus on using web analytics tools to learn which content is more popular, who is visiting and from where. Tools like Google Webmaster tools will be important to find stats for indexing.

By: Andee Sellman, One Sherpa

Andee Sellman, One Sherpa — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:08:41 +0000

Thanks for sharing the post.
Consistency is always the key for me. Using Google analytics you can see trends emerging and also look straight at the latest traffic.
One thing I have done is look at our traffic ranking on Alexa.com in conjunction with Google analytics to get an idea of how much traffic we need to generate to be a site of significance and also how much traffic our competitors are getting.

By: Keith DeLong

Keith DeLong — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:53:56 +0000

Google Analytics has been amazing for us once we coupled it with AdWords. I think most people miss the power of AdWords. It’s not just for drawing traffic, but quite educational in teaching you what keywords and phrases draw people to your site and keep them there.

By: John Sternal

John Sternal — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:14:36 +0000

Thanks for sharing some great tools here. I still question the accuracy of Google Analytics. Regardless, though, you’ve got to have faith and be able to make use of the data that you analyze. Thanks for pointing out LeadLander.

John Sternal
@sternalpr

By: Kris Bovay

Kris Bovay — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:31:42 +0000

Good post. I’ll check out Leadlander – I like the idea of ‘real time’ information. Often the biggest problem with analyzing site statistics is the time it takes to analyze, compare, develop strategies, etc. Everyone wants to build traffic – particularly targeted traffic – but it takes more work than you think when you start out!

By: Marketing Mavens

Marketing Mavens — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:33:18 +0000

Clate,

Thank you for sharing Heatmap with us. That is a really slick tool that I wasn’t aware of before reading your article.

Jarrod Morris

By: Robert Brady

Robert Brady — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:01:53 +0000

I see the same thing working with our users. Right now I would say that most analytics programs gather more data than people can process and turn into actionable items. To determine what data is helpful, try to put yourself in the users shoes. If you’re a prospective client coming to the website for the first time, what are you looking for, what questions do you have and how is the site delivering on those questions?

Even a basic software like ClickTale will show you videos of people interacting with your site. Make the process smoother for users; more intuitive. Do this for every segment of traffic that you find valuable.

Do you have page that does an exceptional job of conveying your value proposition and has a great conversion rate? Look at your analytics to see how many people get to that page, what page they came from and what source the original visit is attributed to. To borrow from Flint McGlaughlin “You’re managing a thought process”.