I've spent the last few days pouring over statistics for one of our clients websites, as part of a periodical review of the site. The aim is to try and identify trends, changes and improvements to the site since it originally launched. In that time, there have naturally been many changes and tweaks, and it's useful to be aware of how you can monitor the effect of these changes.
We recommend Google Analytics for all our clients who have public facing websites. Analytics is a great bit of free kit from Google that tracks a massive amount of data about your site visitors, where they come from, and how they use the site. If you run any online advertising campaigns with Google, Analytics will track additional data about the results of that as well. Analysing all this data can be quite time consuming, and with the vast array of information that gets collected daily, it's easy to make incorrect assumptions about trends and changes without taking into account a lot of factors.
But if you're willing and able to invest the time, the rewards can be great. In this particular example, we've been able to identify a raft of possible changes we think the site would benefit from, and together with the client, will be rolling this out over time. The thing to remember is that, with these changes, it's important to monitor their effect. Sometimes a change will produce totally unexpected results. Sometimes it'll make no difference at all. The important factor to consider is "how will I measure this". There's little point making a change if you can't directly measure it's impact.
In the case of websites analytics, that is perhaps the most useful and telling data you can collect. A website is a living entity, that should evolve continually. You can draw any number of conclusions from reviewing historic data, and as the title suggests, you can come to whatever conclusions you like, when choosing the correct data. Only by making changes, and monitoring the end results, will you truly build up an accurate picture of how your site is performing, and what drives your visitors to keep coming back.
Something to think about next time you're reviewing your weekly traffic stats?
Paul Dunlop
