I am regularly frustrated with the desire by many clients to track statistics such as the number of visitors to a site or the volume of page views consumed. It’s time to break free from all that nonsense (and noise)! Why would anyone care about the top 10 pages report? Or for that matter, the top 100 or top 1000! They deliver no value to the question: Is you web site working and doing its job?

So, why do we have a web site? As I have stated earlier, it is for one of two purposes; to either make money or save money. You are either in the business of promoting something or encouraging visitors to find what they are looking for instead of more costly options such as calling your business for support.

If we can agree that visitors are brought to your site for a specific purpose then learning if they are accomplishing those specific tasks are indications of how the site is performing.

Measures, which illustrate visitor behavior and traffic volumes, are not indicators of web site success. Increasing hits, page views, and visitors may show that marketing campaigns are driving more visitors to your site, but not whether it’s performing well or not.

Instead, focusing on conversions is the key to success. Conversions are much more than tracking successful shopping cart check-outs. Conversions extend to non-commerce activities such as:

• Filling in a form
• Downloading a document
• Signing up for an event
• Registering for upcoming seminars or conferences
• Renewing membership or paying membership dues
• Signing up for continuing education classes
• Consuming key content (measured by how long visitors spend on a specific page)

Once we begin tracking the activity visitors are doing relative to what are objectives are for the site, we can learn how our site is performing and what changes need to be made.