How do you figure out the worth of a company website? Does it depend on the look of the site, the functionality of the navigation, or the usefulness of the information? In a roundabout way, yes. But if you really want to get to the bottom of your website’s potential and discover the cold hard numbers associated with your online worth you’re going to need to get analytical. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling software on your website, or advertising your personal cleaning service, installing web analytics on your website is an absolute must if you plan to attract new customers to your Chatham-Kent business.

What Are Analytics?

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, and analysis of website traffic data for the purpose of understanding and optimizing a web presence. That’s sort of a complicated definition so let’s break it down. Web analytics is a third-party application that is installed on a website, usually through a snippet of code which contains a tracking mechanism. Once properly installed, this application monitors your website, tracking how many people visit your site, what pages they navigate to, and how long they review your site content. But that’s not all. Analytics programs can also track where your visitors are coming from (e it search engines or an affiliated link), the search term they used to find your site, and which page they exited your site from.

Why This Information is Important to Your Chatham-Kent Business

The data from web analytics programs is absolutely crucial to any small business website. This data shows you just how many visitors are able to find your site, what they do when on your site, and where they lose interest. Web analytics provide you with an inside look at how your customer behaves, and more importantly, what you need to do to improve the functionality of your website. Do people keep leaving your site when they get to the check out page? Perhaps a cart redesign is in order. Is the search terms “Chatham-Kent Marketing” sending thousands of visitors to your site or only a handful? Maybe it’s time to be more aggressive with your keyword optimization. The more you know about your website, the better, so what are you waiting for – install web analytics on your Chatham-Kent website today.

Three Free Web Analytic Applications

1) Piwik

This open source web analytics software is great for small business owners because it provides detailed reports on a wide variety of topics. From search engines and keywords to popular pages and visitor loyalty, Pwiki provides you with tons of realtime data. The user interface is also totally customizable – simply drag and drop the widgets that you want to view more often onto your dashboard.

2) Fire Stats

If you’re looking for robust data and are running a WordPress based site, Fire Stats should be your analytic package of choice. Along with real time statistics and referrer information, Fire Stats also monitors RSS subscribers and provides you with the option of excluding hits from certain ISP addresses (helps to filter out your personal browsing for clearer visitor’s stats).

3) Google Analytics

This web analytic program is probably the most well known, and for good reason. Google’s easy-to-use interface is great for small business owners, and the information is presented in a streamline manner. The Google Analytics program also lets you set goals for your site, providing small business owners with a convenient place to track their progress.

Want to improve the worth of your Chatham-Kent company website? Let CIK Marketing help you rise to the top of the rankings with search engine optimization services.

Tags: Chatham Ontario, keyword optimization, small business, web analytics, Website Design