Nine Vital Statistics for Tracking Site Traffic

By Allen Moon of Entrepreneur.com



The great advantage online businesses have over other businesses is that you can measure almost everything about your customers -- where they come from, how long they spend on your site, how they got there, when they're showing up, and from where -- and once you have this information, you can use it to grow your business, increase conversions, and troubleshoot underperforming pages.

All of this customer information is automatically recorded in your Web log. You can access the raw data from your Web host, but a better option is to use one of the many good, low-cost analytics programs out there. And one of the best options for small- to medium-sized businesses -- Google Analytics -- is free! Its only drawback is that it operates on a 24-hour delay.

Getting started with Google Analytics is easy. Sign up and link your subscription to your AdWords pay-per-click campaign (if you have one). Once you're signed up, you're given a snippet of HTML code to add to the very end of the "body" part of your Web page (so put it right before the "body" tag). That's it.

Once you let it run for a while and have some numbers to work with, you'll discover patterns in your traffic and strengths and weaknesses in your strategies. These are the stats to look at:

Unique visitors: How many individuals are visiting your site? This number will provide a benchmark to measure the success of your future efforts.