Use Your Website to Jumpstart Your Traditional Marketing

Statistical analysis. What a terrifying phrase. For most former students it conjures up horrifying memories of a college professor and an endless chalkboard filled with numbers and formulas. If that sentence hasn't sent you spiraling into a boredom-induced coma please bear with me.

I'm going to demonstrate how analyzing your web statistics can enhance your company's marketing strategies, both online and offline. With only minimal effort, your company can use web statistic analysis to gauge the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns and understand the demographics of its customers, leading to a more appealing bottom line.. The best part is that this can be done without going anywhere near one of those gut-wrenching formulas.

Luckily for those of us who slacked off during statistics class there's a plethora of great programs to help us cheat our way to e-business euphoria. For this article I will be focusing on the use of Google Analytics. Google offers an excellent full-featured web statistics program. It's safe, easy to use, scalable and, best of all, free. Adding Google Analytics to your website is surprisingly straightforward: there's no software required, and detailed instructions are available on the Google Analytics website (http://www.google.com/analytics).

Anyone wishing to dip into company funds for a program with a similar feature set can find dozens of great statistic programs currently on the market. One of my favorites is ClickTracks (http://www.clicktracks.com).

Modern Web statistics software has come a long way from the hit-counters that were a fixture on the early homepages. Today an astonishing amount of information can be gathered from the behavior of your site visitors. This data can reveal how customers are finding your site, determine what products or services they seek, understand the individual, and track how and from where they enter and exit your website. If you're wondering how this information is useful, here is a quick scenario that demonstrates an effective way to utilize this information: