Web Analytics

What about good old-fashioned "hits"?
Times have changed in measuring website performance. If you're still just tracking "hits" on your website, you owe it to yourself to start looking at where visitors are coming from and where they're abandoning your website.

Have you identified your conversion triggers for your website, i.e. registering for a newsletter, requesting a quote or making a purchase? We like to keep score around here and these are the things we keep track of when making changes to your website.

Getting Started
If you're not currently using web analytics on your website, you're only seeing a part of the story.

Often, before getting analysis software, our clients would invest a lot of time deciding what links and images should go on their homepage. We'd argue back and forth, basing our reasoning on personal opinion or heresy.

But after we flip on an overlay screen generated by collected statistics, the clients could see as plain as day what users were clicking on from their homepage. They'd find that the large rights-managed picture of the smiling woman wasn't getting any clicks, but the small text link in the corner labeled "download now" was.

Stop the Hemorrhaging
Once you start ...

Tracking what's getting clicked on
What sites people are coming from
What keywords drove them to your site
What your entry pages are (its not always your homepage!)
Where visitors are bailing (exit points)

you can begin to stop the hemorrhaging of visitors.

Action Steps
What can you do with your newly found information?

Try A/B testing with images and copy on your site. Do text links get clicked on more or images?
Do words like Free, Download, Try or Buy work better? Is one search engine sending you more traffic than another?
Does another site have an article or a positive review of your service linking to you?
Are visitors coming in a side-door to your site via a keyword search?
If so, does the page have enough information to keep the visitor on your site and guide them to the next step of your buying process (register, sign up for newsletter, contact, etc)?
Are visitors bailing on key pages? Can they be redesigned or refocused to keep the visitors on track?

Selecting a System

Through our relationships with established analytics providers, our clients receive special discounted pricing.

WebTrends
The new release of WebTrends 7 makes it faster and easier for business users to zero in on the data they need to find actionable answers quickly.

ClickTracks
We've used larger applications such as Hitbox in corporate environments but still like and recommend ClickTracks. For a little insight on the brains behind the company, read our interview with their CEO, John Marshall.

Google Analytics
We have set up a couple sites of ours to use this platform and feel that it meets the basic requirements to keep our clients informed on what visitors are doing on their sites.
Learn more about Google Analytics

Interested In Learning More? To learn more about cre8's web analytics services please contact us today.