Website tracking systems can't track personal information like names, email addresses, who you are or even where you live (ok, maybe the city you live in).

They do track things like which web browsers are used to access your website, how did people find your website, how many people visited your site and specifically which parts of your website they were most interested in. From a privacy point of view, this information isn't meant to track your specific activity on a website but rather to help the website owner focus their efforts to ensure that the information appears properly and is of interest to you.

If you are a website owner, it is especially important to have access to this information so that you can make decisions which are in the best interest of your business.

How many people are visiting your website every day? What if after spending hundreds or possibly even thousands of dollars developing your website or hundreds of hours creating content for your blog, you found out that nobody is even looking at it! Don't care? Ok, go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep going.

If you are serious about your business, you can't afford the luxury of ignoring how your time and money is spent. There are many excellent reasons for wanting to track traffic on your website and you will want to know which of your efforts is effective and which are not. Here are a few examples:

Example #1

With the ever increase of mobile computing, it is easy to assume people want to visit your site using their cell phone. So you go out and hire a developer who is more than happy to take your money. If you had  website statistics available to you, you might have realised that nobody has ever tried to access your website using a cell phone. Given the new information, is it still a good idea to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on this initiative? Perhaps at a later date. Only when the right information available to you,  you can make the best decision for your business.

Example #2

You decided that it was too expensive to have someone create a website for your new business so you decided to do it on your own. Kudos for attempting this by the way but you probably should have checked with me first before making the assumption that it was too expensive 😉 . Anyway, after many hours, your website is finally coming along and looks pretty good on your computer. Fortunately, unlike your competitors, you took the initiative to install Google Analytics on your website. After months of it being up, you are seeing very low traffic and almost no returns. Upon closer inspection, you notice that 98% of your customers are using Apple computers. You call a client up and your suspicions are confirmed. Your website looks awful on the computers of 98% of your customers computers. Without that information, you might have just closed up shop but you now have information available to make the right decision and included Apple computers in all future testing of your website.

Example #3

You've had a website for quite some time now. You have spent a lot of time and effort into developing the content, especially in certain areas. You are feeling pretty good with yourself but it doesn't seem to be getting very much attention no matter how much time and effort you put into it. With an analytics tracking system, you might realize that you've been putting a lot of effort into a specific area of your business which is not what your clients have latched onto. It also turns out that the area they are interested in is something that you are much more comfortable with anyway. Wouldn't you like to know what your clients are really interested in? Just check the statistics for your website.

Example #4

You have a great looking website with really useful content. However nobody has mentioned your website and you don't seem to be getting any business from it. Website statistics might have revealed that you aren't making very good use of keywords (the words people type into search engines like Google). In order to be able to measure the effectiveness of your website, you need to be able to track how people are finding you. Where are they coming from? Which words are they using? Perhaps you need to use better words on your pages but how will you know if the changes you make are working? If this sounds like you and your website, you might want to consider adding website statistics tracking to your site.

Example #5 -- If you are still with me, the following gem will have made all this reading worthwhile!

Have you ever sent out an announcement to your email list or passed out promotional materials with a link back to your website and wondered if even one person clicked or visited the page? Which one of your marketing strategies is working for you? Next time you do this, create a copy of the page you want people to visit and then point your customers to that copy. The results of how successful your marketing campaign is will be clearly visible by simply noticing how many people visited the alternate version of the page. Getting feedback on your marketing efforts couldn't be simpler.

Not tracking visitors to your website? Call me today to find out how you can add this feature to your website. There is no ongoing cost as most of these services are free.

If you are reading this, know that my little counter just incremented by one and I thank you for that… whomever you are (remember, they don't gather personal information).

With warmest regards,

Michael

_____________________________________
Coach Michael Milette
Providing Sustainable Solutions for Life
www.tngconsulting.ca
Tel: 613-825-0091

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