The success or failure of your website depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form, signing up to your free ezine, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency.

Tracking is one of the most important things you will need to do with your website. Do you REALLY know how your Web site is performing? Do you really know where your Web site visitors are coming from? What search engines are people using? What keywords are they using to find you? What is your “Return on Investment” on your pay-per-click campaigns.

What to Track and Measure

1. How many people visited your site
2. What keywords they used to get there
3. How often do people come back
4. What pages are looked at (highest to lowest)
5. Which pages aren’t looked at all
6. What percentage of your visitors turn into customers
7. Referrals – what search engines, pay-per-click / ad campaigns or Web sites are driving traffic to your Web site?
8. Visitor Behavior – what traffic patterns do visitors use to wind their way through your Web site? Are there patterns that you can identify in regards to the path visitors use to navigate your site?
9. Search Engine Rankings – Where do you rank for specific keywords or key phrases with various search engines or directories?