Improve your business online... just by reading this article.

Businesses that succeed online understand the importance of analyzing their Web traffic. All the traffic in the world will not mean a thing if you don't have an understanding of what is working and what is costing you money. Do you know what happens when a visitor gets to your site? How many visitors are going to your site? Where do they come from? What pages do they read? What keywords lead to sales? Are your visitors getting lost? You need to ask those types of questions, and we can help you answer them.

It is important to understand that good advertising and a successful Web site are backed by sound data analysis. It is even more important to track Web site behavior patterns, understand navigation patterns, analyze overall site performance and make changes based on your findings.

Capturing metrics, or measurements of potential customer actions, is a key benefit of having an e-presence. Technology has enabled Internet marketers to measure every aspect of their online marketing campaigns and you should take full advantage of it. Analyzing your Web stats can be instrumental for your business success in a number of different ways. This article will help you understand what stats are important and provide some insight into knowing your audience.

Statistics You Want To Pay Attention To:

unique or return visitor this is a person who visits your site more than once within a specific period of time.

visitor duration how much time each user spends on your site and on which pages.

page views what pages most interest your visitors?

referral sites what other sites are sending you traffic?

history what hours, days, weeks, months do you receive your heaviest flow of traffic?

search engines what search engines drive the most traffic to your site?

keywords/phrases what keywords/phrases drive traffic to your site?

The goal here is to use your Web stats to determine how your site is performing for first-time visitors and return visitors. The visitor duration stat tells you how much time a visitor spends on your site. You may notice visitors are leaving soon after they land on your site. This could be a clue that they are not finding what they are looking for.

Pay special attention to page views. This stat will tell you exactly what pages most interest visitors and can help determine which pages need to be tweaked. Page views will calculate how many visitors viewed a particular page and how many exited through that page as well. If you can see that visitors spend a lot of time on a particular page it may be worth focusing more attention on that page or moving some copy around to cater to these visitors.

Whether you run an online retail store or you use your Web site for informational purposes, it's essential to analyze the performance of keywords that drive traffic to your site. You must identify:

*what keywords generate traffic
*the density of keywords on your site
*how much each keyword costs per click
*what keywords generate page views
*keyword conversions
*ROI

A keyword analysis will help you put your marketing dollars toward the keywords that generate superior results.

Ranking high in the search engines is a goal every business admires but ranking high with poor results is just a waste of money. A full understanding of your search terms, what kinds of visitors they generate and their performance levels will dramatically improve your site's performance and ROI.