So you’ve got your website and with all the confidence that it will be a great success you’re sat there waiting for the phone to ring red hot, or for the email orders to pile in and…… nothing!

When you open a new shop on the high street you have the benefit of being able to see who browses in the window, see if them come in, what they look at, what they spend time on and what they say even but with a website you can’t get all this vital feedback. You don’t know if they move past the home page or what page it is that brings them to your website in the first place.

Well fortunately you don’t have to be left in the dark. There is a way to get this vital info and to analyse it and get that feedback you need. Of course you can’t see the visitors’ faces nor gauge their body language and what they say but you can see how they get to your website and what they do when they get there.

Google analytics is a fantastic tool that allows you to see important and informative statistical data about the people that come to your website. Features include (but not limited to):

• Track how people found you including keywords and referring websites
• See which pages are attracting visitors (landing pages) and which are turning them away (exit pages)
• See information about the visitors themselves like geographical location, browser info, screen resolution and more
• See visitor loyalty, returning visitors, how long they spend on each page
• Make reports, set date ranges, set up goals

Here’s the great thing about it, it’s 100% free. You just have to add some code to every page of your website and Google Analytics does the rest. Of course this is maybe easier said than done but your website developer should be able to do this for you for a small charge.

So here’s what you need to do to start seeing where problems may lie:

1. Get a Google Analytics account
2. Get the code installed on your website
3. Learn to read the data and understand where problems may lie (a subject on its own)
4. Most importantly – act upon your findings!

More information about Google Analytics can be found here on the

What are your thoughts on this? We love to interact with our readers so please leave a comment.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under Internet, Other Stuff, Web Design, Web Development, Web Marketing, communication, e-commerce.
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