Once you have a website, it is really important to monitor statistics to gauge marketing campaigns and usability. A good web design company will install analytics software to track your website user statistics and will help you evaluate the data to track advertising campaigns and find areas to improve website functionality.
With good analytics software, you can find out how many unique visitors viewed your site, what pages they viewed, how long they stayed on each page, what country they live in, what web browser they used, what specific keywords they used and much more. You may not have a clue how to use these little tidbits of information right now, but they are valuable.
One of the most popular free website analytics services available today is Google Analytics, which is fairly easy to use and offers great tutorials to help beginners better understand what the information they are seeing is and how they can use it.
Several other free analytics services exist, like Clicky, Reinvigorate and Piwik. Nearly all of the analytics sites offer tutorials for the beginner, which can make it a lot easier to learn at your leisure, but some sites offer more information than others.
Aside from the free analytics sites mentioned above, there are also several paid sites that you can subscribe to that will provide you with the insight you need to keep your website competitive. Most users opt for the free sites because they provide you with pertinent information you need without the added expense.
If you are having your site revamped, you should definitely ask your web designer whether or not they will analyze your data to improve upon what is currently there. Although not all web design companies offer to assist you in analyzing the data for your site, many do.
Why? Well, by analyzing your data, your web designer may be able to see where your previous site was lacking and recommend ways to fix it, whether it is with search engine optimization or with different coding. If the web design company you select provides this service and you commit to it, the result should be an improved site with more traffic than you had previously – along with a sleek new look.
