October 13, 2008

Top 5 Reasons to Track Your Website Traffic

Knowing who is visiting your web site is key to knowing how to better serve your customers.

For example, maybe you are based in Austin and Dallas and over some weeks you see a lot of traffic coming from San Jose, California. Maybe this clues you in to a customer base in a new region of the country. This is just one of many reasons why it's critical to know the details about traffic to your web site.

It's possible now to track a lot more than just how many people are coming to your site. Google has a free web analytics tool which works really well. A new service from Woopra, free and in beta right now, also allows you to track visitors in real time (we recently covered it here).

Here's a quick reminder of five reasons to use a web analytics tool to understand your traffic (courtesy of Woopra):

1. You can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives.
2. You need to know where your traffic is coming from, how often and why.
3. You need to know what users like/don't like about your Web site and where they are dropping off.
4. You need to know how much time people are spending in your site on average.
5. It's how you'll really get to know your customers.

Laura Leites, Assistant Editor, Smallbiztechnology.com

tags: analytics , google , web stats , woopra | 0 comments