By Amanda Bala
Now that you are aware of what analytics are, where to find them and what you need to be doing, the next step is to figure out exactly what data you need to be analyzing. What information do you want to know? Here are a few key pieces of you might want to look at.
Visitors: You want to look at how many visitors are coming to your site as well as how many unique visitors. If you are getting a lot of traffic, but your unique visitor number is low, it might mean that you are having search engine issues.
Length of time on site: If you are getting a lot of traffic, but the visitors are not staying long, then that can be an issue. Again, you might need to add to your content, make your site more inviting or interactive or even more interesting.
Traffic Source: What sites are referring people to your website? This is very important because it will impact where you decide to promote your content in the future.
Top Content: What content is being looked at the most on your site? Once you know, you can expand on those topics and try to bring in more traffic. You must also look at the content that is not eliciting a lengthy stay and take that as a sign that you need to change that page.
Referring Keywords: This will tell you what words people are typing into search engines to find you.
Location: This identifies the geographic area of where you are receiving traffic.
Campaign Tracking: This feature helps you track visitors from your ads, wherever they appear, to a particular goal, page or conversion at your website.
It is important to know what is happening with your website. Do not overlook the importance of analytics. Find a system online, and start tracking!