• They don´t know what their website visitors are really interested in.
• They don´t know what keywords people are using to find them on the search engines.
• They don´t know how many people clicked through to the site from their recent e-mail campaign.
• They don´t know the ROI (return on investment) on their online marketing dollars.

Here´s how NOT to be one of them:

If you´re about to launch a website for your business:

• Look for a hosting company that offers a comprehensive site analysis program, or "stats program," as part of the hosting account (see "What to look for in a stats program" below). Stats programs analyze technical information about your website visitors and filter it into graphs, charts, and plain-language terms that can provide invaluable, real-time information about your website´s effectiveness as a marketing tool.

• Expect to pay for quality information. As with anything else in life, you will get what you pay for. You could find a hosting company charging, say, $3.95 per month for 100 MB of disk space, unlimited e-mailboxes, 50 GB of bandwidth a month, the sun, moon, and stars -- but their barebones stats program tells you nothing useful about your visitors´ behavior (and you´ll probably never find a live person at the end of the telephone line). Expect to spend $19.95 - $49.95 per month for hosting that includes a truly useful stats program at no extra charge.

• If possible, preview the program before you open the hosting account. If you have questions, ask the sales rep. If he/she can´t answer them, ask to speak to someone in the tech department. (See "What to look for in a stats program" below so that you know what to ask.)

If you already have a website:
When you first set up your hosting account, you received a user name and password so that you could manage the account online and, among other things, access the web page with your stats. (Hopefully you kept that user name and password in a safe place!) Use that access information to enter your account and get familiar with your stats program. If you don´t know how to access and use the program, call your hosting company and find out (have your user name and password handy; they will need it for authentication). Have them walk you through your stats program until you know fully how it works and how to customize it so that it displays the information you need.

What to look for in a stats program? At the least, the ability to:

• Set a date range -- day, week, month, year. Some programs show only cumulative stats up to the day you access the program -- not much use, especially when you´re running an online ad campaign and can test and revise your ads during the run (the stats program will help you see which ads are delivering traffic to your site and which ads are not).
• See stats in real time. Make sure the stats are current to the previous day. Stats updated only once a week are useless.
• See which search engines people are coming from and what keywords they´re using.
• See which pages are visited most often, least often, and for how long. Pages that are visited more often than others are pages that can be maximized with additional marketing or sales messages.
• See which products people are looking at, who´s dropping out of your shopping cart, who´s registering for your services, who´s visiting from cell phones, personal digital assistants, and other wireless devices.

  If the stats don´t meet your needs, you have several options:
  1. Find a hosting company that provides a comprehensive stats program, such as Urchin or LiveStats, with the hosting account. If you´ve already got a website, consider switching to a different host (takes 7-10 business days).

  2. Purchase your own software to run on your local machine. Two online resources: Deep Metrix (http://www.deepmetrix.com) and Urchin (http://www.urchin.com). Each program retailed for .00 at time of writing and can be purchased from their respective websites.

  3. Open a web-based account with a stats outsourcer such as Hitbox (http://www.hitbox.com) or WebTrendsLive (http://www.webtrendslive.com). Costs range from $25 per month and up depending on the number of pageviews your site receives each month (costs are at time of writing).

  4. Use a free service (also offered by Hitbox).

  Without a solid web analytics program in place from the start, your online marketing efforts could be a waste of time and money. Know the importance of web analytics in your website marketing plans. Arm yourself with the right stats program. Get stuck in your own website traffic!

  
  

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  Regina Kahney can be reached at http://www.marketorial.com.
  Regina Kahney is CEO of Marketorial.com LLC, a New York-based website development firm. Marketorial specializes in "Web Design with the Search Engines in Mind," providing integrated website development and promotion for small- and mid-sized businesses, foundations, and the publishing industry.
  
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