Who Cares About Web Analytics?

Recently, my colleague Trace Johnson posted three valuable recommendations for improving your web site. The first recommendation was to "Get Web Analytics." But, why should you care about Web Analytics? Not because you care about analytics. We know, it sounds a bit contradictory; but analytics for the sake of analytics doesn't help anyone. Web Analytics is a means to an end. It is a tool designed to provide insight into your user's experience, and in turn improve your ROI. So, once again, why should you care about Web Analytics? Because you care about your users. Your web site is all about your users. If you don't have users, your web site is useless. If your users don't like your web site, your web site is ineffective. Analytics can give you real insight into the desires of your users. It answers the questions, "What do our users care about?" and, "How does our company motivate them to care?" It allows you to truly give the user what they want. Not only will you learn why users are visiting, you will also discover if they liked what they saw upon arrival. We often find that users are interested in different content than what the web site owner assumes. If your 'News' page is packed with items regarding how to run a business; but the most popular items are the few which describe your products and services, you need to know that. Analytics provides a framework for improving your web site as you learn what type of content causes people to leave, and what type of content inspires user interaction. Because you care about your company. Analytics provides your company with hard data on the effectiveness of your online initiatives. Is your web site good enough? Is it producing a high ROI? Are you spending too much time and money on it? Or perhaps not enough? Analytics will tell you. Having Analytics allows your company to precisely measure your ROI. By creating goals such as sales, newsletter sign-ups or contact form completions--just to name just a few, you will know exactly how successful your web site is in raising money, brand awareness, user interest and leads. You can use that information to scale your web marketing expenditures up or down. There has never been a more precise tool for measuring user interaction and ROI. If you care about your users, and you care about your company; you need Web Analytics.