Web Analytics is the process of analysing (analytic ing) your website traffic to determine trends or patterns, and to retrieve aggregate usage information that you can use in your marketing and advertising strategies.

As a business owner or manager, you are not likely to hire a new employee and then become totally clueless about whether that person ever shows up for work. You are also not likely to take on a new partner without some way of tracking the revenues and benefits gained from the relationship. So why do you build a web site, invest time in creating content and money in marketing campaigns, and then devote little or no effort to analyzing the return on your investment?

You're not alone, it is more common than you would ever realize. People are not taking the time to look at web site traffic log files or traffic metrics, even those who spend a lot of money on online advertising, because a vast number of small businesses are still relatively new to the web, and many have yet to figure out how to track their return on investment (ROI). Many other people do look at their web site traffic statistics, but have trouble making sense of the data because of the way it is recorded in raw webserver log files.

Internet savvy webmasters know there are easy to use, easy to understand and affordable web analytics tools available to monitor and analyze their site traffic such as My Site Traffic. They also know that by using web site traffic analysis tools, they can do a great deal more than just counting how many pages were viewed. They can assess their visitors online behavior and evaluate the effectiveness of their online marketing campaigns.

My Site Traffic offers an excellent web site traffic metrics and analytics package for an affordable price. You can even try the service free for upto a month! Click here to view a slide-show demo. Register for a free trial web metrics account.

If you have a website that means more to you than just a brochure for your business, here are a few ways web analytics can help you:

Know your web site metrics. Get accurate and real-time information on your site traffic, page views, unique visitors, referral sources. Use these statistics to optimize your marketing strategies.

Know your web site traffic. Get detailed information on your visitor demographics, their physical city/state/country location as well as their browser and computer types. Identify the most popular pages on your website and improve the content on the least popular pages. Spot potential dead-end pages by tracking exit pages where visitors are leaving your site. Watch your visitor navigate around your website, observe the actual click-path they take.

Know your partners and affiliates. Track other websites who link to you and expand relationships with the top external referring websites. Ensure external links are bringing visitors to appropriate pages on your website. Easily identify any site that is sending traffic to outdated or obsolete pages.

Know your place on the search engines. Monitor traffic coming from all the major search engines, and track the keywords and search phrases that bring visitors to your website. Identify keywords that are not drawing as much traffic to optimize your website content and improve your search engine visibility.

Know your ROI from advertising. A successful advertising campaign must generate a high Return On Investment. By using specific landing pages for each advertising or keyword bidding campaign, you can easily track results for all visitors that clicked through your ads. Observe their actual path through your website, and determine if they made a purchase (or found what they were looking for).

Simple to implement. Simply add a few lines of HTML code to your website pages, and your web site traffic metrics will immediately start being recorded. No need for transferring enormous webserver logs from your web host.

Simple to use. Login to the Report Manager at any time to view real-time statistics for your website (updated hourly). Summary reports can also be saved and emailed periodically to your mailbox in PDF format automatically for daily/weekly/monthly reports. If you have multiple websites, you can attach all your sites to your reporting account to easily view and manage your reports.