You have Google Analytics. Great start. You run weekly traffic reports on your website. Wonderful. Let’s just say you are even crunching the numbers. Okay. But are you making the right decisions as a result? Or, are you passing the buck to the so-called “experts” and allowing them decide...

As a site owner, you may have created the world’s best website, you may believe it is the elephant in the room, which no one can ignore. Cheers, but are there any “suitors” for your elephant? Is it drawing in the traffic? Is it paying you dividends? If silence is your answer, then let the truth...

Let’s start this section on tracking conversions with a small anecdote. A troubled business owner once said ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.’ All of us, at some time or the other, must have felt the same way, when you think about it. In...

Remember the good old days when the success of a website was gauged solely on tracking hits. How about hit counters on the bottom of a website that would display the total number of hits and accumulate with each passing visitor. The more hits, the more successful the website. Bring back memories? In...

Talking about goals is an old topic in the world of analytics but one worth repeating. Enabling goals is one of the best ways to assess how well your site meets its business objectives. The hardest part for most website owners always seems to be identifying what goal type to use. A goal can be any activity...

It’s a new year and a fresh start. For some, that means resolutions and goals for 2010. Okay. I realize that dropping a few pounds and not smoking are ideal resolutions but what about goals for your website? To me, setting up a goal would be just as easy as not touching that piece of chocolate...

I saw the writing on the wall in February 2007 when Google began personalizing search results based on a user’s search history. But back then, a user had to log in to their Google account and opt in to enable Google to track their web history. Now personalized search is widespread, regardless...

It’s amazing there are still business owners who just don’t understand the fundamentals of owning a web site. With all the buzz about technology and social media, the primary focus always appears to be on web design. True, web design is important. Especially when it comes to branding. But...

Every business entity today is faced with a problem (or two), whether related to an internal process or customer. Analytics offers up part of the solution by providing us with the intelligence to understand and address the problem while benefiting the customer in the end.  Yet, the data offered up by...

More and more Americans are relying on the Internet for product/service searches. As a result of this drastic yearly growth I have always stressed the importance of search engine optimization as “the” most important online marketing strategy today. I now must admit that having a good local...