In a recent report from Econsultancy and Lynchpin Analytics, 88% of companies are using Google Analytics to track the performance of their websites, compared to 66% last year. The survey of 800 predominantly UK-based companies found 23% were using Google’s free tool exclusively, compared to 14% a year ago, while 57% were using it in conjunction with another analytics platform. Excluding Google Analytics, Omniture was the most commonly used web analytics package with a 42% market share, followed by WebTrends.

Back in April this year, Yahoo! made their Web Analytics tool free to search and display advertisers supported by a Yahoo! account team. I am sure we will see Yahoo!’s analytics package come to gain a decent market share of the analytics market.

Analytics packages allow you to see how well, good or bad, your website is performing; who your real audience is (you may be surprised at what you find compared to your offline audience or educated guesses) , and how well you are converting visitors to customers/enquirers. To have a website that you rely on for brand exposure or more importantly income that does not have some sort of analytical data reporting (that is easy to decipher) is a huge problem for any business. How can anyone know their websites true ROI (return on investment) if they don’t measure its performance in some way? If the website is non transactional then just tracking how many enquiries or brochures are requested via the site will allow you to actually “see” how your website is working for you, and establish if it can work harder.

Having a website without analytics is equivalent to having a high street shop, sitting in the back office during its busier times and only coming to the shop floor to empty the till during quieter times! How many of you would run a business like this, not knowing who has entered your store and actually bought anything?

The analytics over time will help you establish if your business is “seasonal”; this is possible in the online marketplace. The traffic, conversions and sales data will provide proof as to whether your website needs work with regards to your “call to actions”. A call to action can be requests such as “click here to order a brochure” or “read more” or “buy now…”.

If your website is performing poorly then you should look to hire professionals to optimise your website in several ways: better calls to action = more enquiries/sales, better site structure = visitors should stay on your site for longer, better keyword density = your website pages gaining higher positions in the search results which will mean an increase in traffic numbers.

If you haven’t got an analytics package on your website as you read this, then I urge you to set one up. When ever we gain a new client, if they don’t have analytics set up, we set one up for them immediately. There are many free analytics, such as Google & Yahoo!, that are very good so cost is not an issue. Once you have several months worth of data you will be able to see how your website is performing. If it isn’t performing as you would like then at least get an expert opinion. By getting the opinion of someone who is search savvy you will at least get an idea as to whether there is real scope for improvement in your websites performance, or if your expectations may be off the mark due to market sector you operate in. Either way knowing the answer to the question gives you one less thing to worry about, and the chance to make an informed decision on the future use of your website and how to work towards it working harder for you.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 7:43 pm and is filed under SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), Search Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.