The Importance Of Tracking
Monday, November 06, 2006
As many of you know, I only set up this blog recently. Four
years of success, failure and testing. This allows me to offer
some advice to anyone starting out that I wish I had when I was
starting out in the online business world. Today, I am going to
discuss one of the MAJOR things I wish I had have paid
attention to sooner. Site tracking and analysis.
When you set up a website for the first time, it's always one
of the last things you bother to take care of or put in place.
Visitor tracking, no matter what your business is EXTREMELY
important. It's always forgotten in the flood of excitement of
finishing your site and launching it. You have worked hard on
your site, your content, your design and your features. It's
your baby and you want to let it fly. That's great. If, like
me, you experiment, you just want to test the waters and see if
you get any revenue from adsense, or make a sale (Or affiliate
sale).
So now, here you are 2 (Or more) months later and your site is
starting to take off. You are starting to generate a few
dollars from your website. Great! Now it's time to improve the
flow, usability and find out what your visitors are actually
looking for.
But wait. How do you find this out?
You can first look into your hosts Webalizer or awstats
statistics, but in fairness, while they are great for checking
referrers and traffic stats, they don't drill down to the nitty
gritty. You realize now that you should have put something in
place when you first started.
Enter Google Analytics (Formerly Urchin). Google Analytics is
an advanced and FREE visitor tracking service. Most of you have
probably heard of it already. Google Analytics allows you to
track your visitors and their behavior down to the most
detailed level. Covering the features of Google Analytics is
far beyond the scope of this document, but sign up and play
around for yourself. Google Analytics is also SUPER easy to set
up. All you need to do is past a few lines of JavaScript into
your sites HTML.
Once you have Google Analytics set up, the rest is taken care
of by Google. You don't have to worry about a thing.
Now, assuming you have taken my advice (Which I assure you in
this case is 100% good) you have two (Or more) months of
tracking information available to you. Are you visitors coming
and searching for something on your site? If so, should it be
made available on the main page? Why make them search? Are your
visitors coming to your site looking for content that you do not
actually have? Maybe you should create it? The list goes on..
You will be surprised at some of the search terms your site is
found under. Some will make you laugh and some are even pretty
upsetting terms that you DO NOT want to be found under!
So there you have it. If you set up your analytics and tracking
early on, it makes it ten times easier to improve your site and
grow your business earlier and start making more money earlier.
I have used many different tracking services and it all boiled
down to me using my default server stats programs and Google
analytics. Experiment a little and find out what works for you.
I hope this article has given you enough reason to invest an
additional five minutes setting up some sort of tracking for
your website before you go "live". Your five minute investment
can make the world of difference months down the line.
About The Author: David Davis, is the lead developer and
project manager of RedflyStudios LTD. Web Design Ireland For
more information visit http://www.redflystudios.com
posted by Dennis Cheesman @ 5:35 AM,
