A Painless Way to Track Web Data and Keep your Sanity

Guest Post from: http://www.wordwritepr.com/

The varied tasks and daily duties required of the small business operator are endless. In today’s fast-moving, digital marketing world a credible, effective and professional web presence is essential.

So is continued and accurate measurement of how, when and from where your web visitors engage your web site. How visitors got to your site, what they view and even how long they stay are important details that can go far in shaping and effectively managing web content and engage prospects. But the trick is, how do you get this knowledge and insight to web visitors without drowning in endless data? How do you review of your web audiences in a way that is quick, painless and won’t challenge your sanity?

Well all of this is not as difficult or challenging as it sounds. Below we offer four very doable tips that can rapidly help make better sense of your web data.

Use a Dashboard

A handful of common factors highlighting web performance have emerged as standard in getting a good first glimpse of visitor. Most of these like “total visitors”, “average pages viewed” or “bounce” (those who exit your site within 30 seconds of arriving from their landing page), provide an easily understood gauge of visitor behavior. These are common variables found in dashboard measurement clusters like that in Google Analytics and provide a cheap and easy way to monitor basic web activity. They cut through the clutter and rapidly prioritize what issues should be of primary and continuing interest.

Build a Baseline

The old saying goes “anything worth doing is worth measuring”. Well we have a “new” saying: “Any data worth collecting about your web needs a baseline.” Common dashboard indicators mean little without context—and that context comes from first establishing “normal” web visitor levels and characteristics. Use three or six months –or if possible—a year of retrospective data on which to build average values for dashboard indicators. Then when with a new measurement period compare them to the baseline levels. Instantly you’ll gain a sense of what’s up, down and in-between.

Gauge Source Data

All web visitors make it to your site in a one of four ways:

1. By directly typing in your web address,

2. by being referred to your site through an active link in other digital content,

3. as a result of a search engine query, or

4. as a result of a digital conversion marketing campaign.

Commonly called “source” data this information is another common element found in most web site dashboards. Keep track of the proportion of visitors that you obtain from each of these four “channels” and use that knowledge in overall web marketing including adjustment to any “keyword” marketing approaches you utilize.

Don’t Measure Too Much

A lot of small business operators get overwhelmed by simply measuring web visitor activity too frequently. By all means you should check daily to make sure your site is operating and common links feeding it are not broken. But in terms of summarizing web visitor behavior for baseline comparison, over measurement is just as dangerous as no measurement. Even in the digital communications world most trends shift and emerge slowly—you’ll want to be able to recognize then but not force or run the risk of “seeing” a shift that is yet to actually form. Our guide: Once a baseline is established take monthly measures of dashboard variables and track them over time. This way you’ll literally be able to see shifting behavior over time and respond accordingly.

Understanding web visitor activity is important but it doesn't have to be daunting. Naturally, almost all web measurement platforms have far more detailed capability than discussed here. There will be times when using more detailed measures will help you. But to get an accurate, quick and easily understood picture of your web visitors try these tips to help turn web data into knowledge.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Furiga, ABC
President & CEO

Like WW on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/wordwritepr

Follow WW on Twitter, http://twitter.com/wordwritepr

Connect with us on LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/company/wordwrite-communications

Site Links

Saturday, October 6, 2012

A Painless Way to Track Web Data and Keep your Sanity