Most business websites share the objective of getting people to visit the website and take action once they get there.   The desired action will vary from site to site.  You may want your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, contribute to your blog, or to purchase some products or services.   Whatever it is, when a visitor does it, it is a success.

What is a Success for You?

You might have more than one type of success on your website.  You might call it a success if someone contacts you and provides their phone number or you might only call it a success when they put in their credit card number.  Maybe there are several different successes on your website.  Step 1 is to identify what exactly is a success and make sure there is a method for tracking that on your website.

Identify your successes and identify the way to identify them.  The confirmation message that follows a sale or the thank you page after someone contacts you are two possible examples.  If you accept member registrations, a success would be the page that displays after they confirm their registration.  Identify all these successes and how to identify them.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a statistics package that you can use free.  There is a simple setup process to get started and there are more advanced features when you are ready for them.  One of those advanced features is the "campaign".   Once you have identified the successes you can use that information to setup Google Analytics campaigns.

Google Analytics supports many different reports and it might take you a little while to find the ones that help you the most.  The main thing that most people look for are:

• Number of visitors per day
• Number of pages viewed by each visitor
• Keywords used to find your site
• Sites that referred visitors to your site
• Number of successes based on your campaigns

Comparing these numbers can give you great insights into what is going on and why.   If you sell a book on your website, you can track how many people used related keywords to find your site, how many viewed the page that actually promotes your book, and how many people actually buy the book.  Comparing the numbers will give you insights as to where people are stopping.  That becomes your area to work on.

Another advantage to Google Analytics in contrast to statistics built into your web hosting account is that Google only reports legitimate visitors.  The technology used by Google is more accurate.  You get numbers that you can use.  Other statistics packages might report higher numbers, but those numbers are only good for bragging rights, not for optimizing your online business.

The Numbers Never Lie

It is so important to know what is going on with your website.  How many visitors do you get each day?  How many of those visitors are looking at your products and services?  What keywords are they using?  What are they buying? 

It takes good numbers to make good decisions.  If you are not getting enough successes on your website, consider making changes to your website.  If you are not getting enough traffic to your website, consider other marketing strategies.   You can only tell what to fix by first identifying what needs fixing.