In order to increase the amount of traffic a web site receives, most companies use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to improve their search engine rankings and bring in more visitors. However many SEO firms do not offer Analytics as part of their service. Although all the traffic a web site receives is beneficial to a certain extent, some types are much more likely to convert into sales.

Main aspects of Web Analytics:

Traffic Sources – If you use standard statistics software you can identify exactly where visitors to your web site are coming from. By making use of Analytics you can study each individual source of traffic to see how well it is converting. With this information you can identify the type of search phrase or link that sends the most valuable customers to your site. Then you can put your SEO efforts into getting more of this valuable traffic from similar areas.

Site Behavior – By tracking the progress of visitors at your web site you can learn some very useful information. If you study the data on how long visitors stay on certain landing pages and how well different sales pages convert, you can make improvements to your site. By changing the under performing pages to be more like the most effective ones you can significantly increase your overall conversion rate.

Online Marketing – With Analytics you can look into other forms of online marketing to assess their effectiveness. You can track the number of visitors from a specific advert that go on to make a purchase at your site. This information will tell you if the advert is worth the cost you are paying, it could also allow you to make accurate predictions about how a change in your advertising budget would effect profit levels. Other forms of marketing such as email campaigns and pay-per-click advertising can also be tracked so you can continually improve your marketing efforts to make them more profitable.

If you use Analytics on your web site not only will you find out what works but you will also find out what does not work. This can save you a lot of time and money. You could find that a very competitive keyword phrase that your web site has been targeting converts poorly. This type of information is vital because it allows you to use all your time and resources on bringing in traffic that converts well and improves your bottom line.

From the points outlined here you should be able to see that if you are not using Web Analytics you are missing out on numerous different ways of improving the conversion rate of your web site. If you are currently using an SEO firm or are looking for one make sure that they employ Web Analytics, if they do not then look elsewhere.