If you already own a professional web analytics tool, then you obviously have a good bead on what the internet can do for a business and what you might want to observe in a back-end setting. Getting that web analytics program is an important step, but being able to discern what information is most useful to you with that analytics tool and what actions to take after viewing this data is the heaviest burden for web marketers. You can split and label the data a thousand ways, but the level of detail can be daunting when looking at a full website that includes paid advertising campaigns and link partners. What data might be important to think about? Below is a quick list of items you may want to analyze to evolve your campaign or e-commerce focus.

Keywords. Be sure to look at your top 25 keywords. By taking a look at the top search terms that visitors used to reach your website on the organic (free search) side, you can get a better snapshot of what keywords are drawing people in and which ones barely register a glance. Sometimes we find that people are using synonyms or variations of keywords that you may not have considered. This information can lead you to change specific web page copy to tailor it to what people are searching. This can also lead to a rethinking of your paid advertising budget allocation in regards to these popular keywords. Why pay for an ad that gets only a handful of searches when you can dump more money into those top 10 or 20 words? Why cling to keywords that don’t get any searches? The nature of the web forces us to constantly reevaluate and review our page content, focus, and keywords. These things change from day to day, so you need to keep a fresh perspective on your website content and keywords.

Link Partners or Referrers. Take a look at your top 10 or 20 referrers. This will show you how people get to your site outside of search engines. Referrers are link partners or more simply put, any site that has a link to your website. Once you filter out the free search engines from this list, you can investigate link partnerships with these sites. This is a very nebulous process and each link partner can be different in terms of what they require for acquiring a link to your site. Some referrers are free, some are reciprocal (meaning you need to put a link to their site on one of your pages and they will do the same for you), and some are paid. There are link directories that have varying degrees of legitimacy, so be wary. You don’t want to fork out cash to a sketchy link farm directory! If you already have link partners, then kudos, but if you don’t, looking at these top referrers can give you ideas on where to market or advertise your brand using links or banners.

Top “Next” Pages. Take a look at your top next pages. This refers to any page on your site that a user went to after starting from a specified page. Usually, it’s best to take a look at your home page first and see what page people go to next. Are people going to your products page after viewing the homepage? Are they signing up for that newsletter or filling out a form? These “next” pages can be very helpful in analyzing your site structure, navigation, page design, and page content validity. If the bulk of your visitors are actually exiting after viewing your home page, you have to ask “why?” Is your homepage enticing enough to encourage visitors to stay and look around? If your goal is to get people to sign up for your newsletter, or look at your on-sale products, is there enough relevant copy or site navigation to encourage them to go to these key pages on your site? If not, then you’re losing them right at the start! This can be extremely helpful in seeing how people reach your site. It can also bring into question the focus of your site in general. If you look back to your top keywords and then look to your homepage, are people seeing what they searched for? If not, then you need to rework your page design and page content to focus on those key elements. If you want your visitors to view your on-sale items, then be sure that it’s in plain view on the website with keyword-rich text content, graphic banners, or obvious navigational elements. Using the “next” page data for your homepage opens up a wide view of where your visitors are going and hopefully finding out why the went where they did.

These focuses within your web analytics output can help you fashion a website that gets your visitor what they want in the fewest steps or pages. There are still many different ways to look at your analytics data and many facets to analyze, but by looking at these basics you can really open your eyes to what goes on once the user arrives at your website. Half the battle is getting a visitor to your website, and once they are on your website the true victory is getting them to take the desired action you want. Analyzing your top keywords, top referrers, and top “next” pages can help you streamline the visitor experience to turn them from prospects into customers.

So now that you have your website up and running, optimized for SEO, and even have a pay-per-click campaign chugging along, what do you do to make your site even better? Invest in a professional web analytics program. Web analytics software is becoming a bigger player in site design, site restructuring, user behavior analysis, and web reporting. Why invest in a serious web analytics tool? One simple reason – complete voyeurism. You get to see what a user does when they reach your website. You can view their actions or lack of action to help you get insight into how to make your website better. Not only can you find out if that new coupon banner is getting any clicks from Joe Q. Webuser, but you can also find out which links he likes to click the most.

There are many analytics tools out there at the moment jockeying for your dollar, so I won’t get in to who is best or what works best. ClickTracks, NetTracker, and WebTrends are among the most popular these days that are beyond basic analytic offerings. These professional analytics tools can range from cheap to expensive depending on how committed you are and how much you’re willing to spend. For example, ClickTracks allows a user to create analytics from log files or directly from each page action (using javascript code). The ultimate goal is that you get the in-depth user information to help you improve and tailor your website to your customers’ needs and then have the ability to compare SEO vs. PPC, referrer visits vs. search engine visits, and whatever else you or your client may want to track. The most powerful advantage to using a serious analytics tool is that you have the ability to compare different venues of traffic and advertising to see where your money is most efficiently spent. You can compare organic search to paid search to find out where to allocate money. If certain keywords are getting high organic results, you may want to cut back on your pay-per-click spending to save money.

Whether the goal is to sell neckties, or to sign up for a newsletter, pro web analytics tools can also help you find out what is and isn’t working on your site and then provide insight on what steps to take next. Web analytics tools give you a wealth of knowledge that was, until recently, unavailable in traditional media. Not only can you create a website that can manipulate a user’s navigation, but you can also run endless tests to see what provokes a user to move through your site. If you add a hyperlink to the company logo, will that improve site navigation? If you focus more page copy on your top five keywords, will you get more traffic? If you move the contact us link from the bottom to the top of the page, will you get more responses? With a little determination and patience, you can turn your website into a running experiment that tests how customer friendly your site can become.

To evolve your site is a giant undertaking in terms of time, money, and risk of losing valuable customers. The greatest asset of professional web analytics software is that you can finally know if that new banner or navigation bar really does help, and if not, then it can help you figure out what the next steps are in improving your website to achieve your goals.