Website Analytics for the New Small Business
January 6th, 2010 | 
Author: There are free solutions for a small business when you need data from your site.
When I started off as a manager, I was not overly concerned with data. I was more focused on my staff, and the job at hand. As I developed as a manager, I saw how understanding an MIS report could help me perform better. I became involved with budgeting more, so I found that I really needed to understand my numbers. I think that some small business owners may ignore their operating metrics in areas where they are not familiar. Setting up a website may be one such area.
To operate your website well, you need good analytics programs. This means paying for a program that will give you the data that you require. However, as a new small business, you may find that the money you have is better spent on marketing or graphic design of the site. This entails that you should turn to the myriad of free options ( but it is nice to donate to the developers). Here is a list that I think useful for a business owner.
Awstats
this is my go to program for site data. It is packaged in my cpanel. This is where you may want to check with hosting services before settling on where to host your site. What kind of support do they have? Is cpanel included? What analytics software is provided? Awstats can be downloaded, and placed on your site if you do not already have it. My only complaint with these reports is that I cannot specify the time period for the data. Awstats goes by month. Here is where you can find Awstats for download.
WP Click Track
Eric Lamb created this plugin (and yes I have mentioned it before, but I am enjoying this plugin on my site) to track clicks on yur site. If you are new to having a website, this may not seem a big deal to you, but trust me, you will want the reports from this plugin. You can find out more information from WP Click Track’s description by the author. To install it on your site, go to the Install New Plugins portion in your WordPress administration panel. If you type in the name into the search box, it will bring it up. Follow the instructions, and it will be simple to install it on yur site.
Google Analytics
This program can give you great information, if you drill down to find it. That is one thing to remember with any analytics program, you have to spend some time with them to discover all of the data that lurks in them. Since my business is local, I can use Google Analytics to find data about where people located, and quite a bit of data about how they interact with the site. This program keeps improving. I am playing with the Intelligence feature now. To install, you have to create an account here. Once you have set up the account, and followed the instructions there, you will be provided with some code. This needs to be placed between your <body> tags in your theme. Your WordPress theme has an opening <body> tag in the header, and a closing </body> tag in the footer. I would go with placing the code in either the header or footer, since these will show up on your pages (other files like the index.php may not always be used). Once you have logged onto your WordPress administration area, you will find a section entitled Appearance. Under that heading, you will see part titled “Editor”. When you open up the editor, you will find all of the files which make up your theme. I place my code in the Footer. I want it to load after the information in the header. Click on the Footer.php, and you will see the code for the footer show up in the editing box. Look through the code for </body>. Copy the code from Google, and paste it above this tag. Click on the Update file button below the editing panel. Once saved, Google will begin storing data for your site. You cannot see data in real time, so you will have to wait until the next day for the data.
eXTReMe Tracker
I just installed this analytics program on my site. I read alright reviews, but it seemed that most people wanted Google Analytics. There is an advantage to Extreme Tracker that I have noticed so far, I can view results on the same day that they are occurring. Sometimes this is nice for certain bits of intelligence gathering. You can go to the Extreme Tracker site to set up an account, and then you will copy and paste the code like you did for Google Analytics.
When you are starting, there are other pieces of data that you will need, and you can obtain a general idea from free programs, but you will eventually have to pay to find the better data. I want to show you some data that I find useful, and where to find it in the reports produced by the forementioned programs. Those will be the next posts.
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