I’d like to complete my look at how you should have your website visitor analytics set up by encouraging you to examine your data frequently and regularly, not just in a bored moment or when you have a marketing presentation to make. And the way to do this? Set up reports which are automatically generated at set intervals and have them emailed to you. It’s really easy. In Google Analytics, for example, you just navigate to the report you want, such as “Traffic Sources”, set up the number of results, any segments, etc., until it’s looking just great, then click the “email” tab and fill in the details. There are options for ready-to-present PDF reports, or raw data for using in Excel.
As I mentioned yesterday, I get to help with the Google Analytics for most of the companies who use us to manage their Google AdWords campaigns, and the reports I set up to appear in my inbox monthly include the sources of visits, the location of the visitors generated by the AdWords campaigns, and the landing pages for those visitors. Your requirements will differ, but the beauty of it is that you can set up whatever you wish.
People who study their website traffic reports regularly find they really start to take notice of the data and to act on it. Measuring what’s happening on your website is a vital part of online marketing, and it’s essential that you don’t let this task permanently remain at number 2 on your to-do list.
