It’s hard to know if you’re doing well without metrics. Many web hosting providers include a statistics package, which will give you measurements about:
- how many visitors have come to your website, and which pages they visit
- where the visitors are from
- how long visitors stay on your website
- how many visitors return
- where the traffic is coming from: are they clicking on a link on another website, or search engine listings, or by typing in the address directly?
If your web host doesn’t provide statistics, or if you want another data source (they’re never 100% correct and so never quite agree with each other), it’s simple to add Google Analytics to your website.
1. Go to http://google.com/analytics and sign up. (You’ll need a Google account for this. If you have a Gmail account that will work.)
2. Click on Create New Website Profile. Fill in the form with your website address, time zone and country. Click Finish.
3. You’ll receive a unique UA code. This is the marker that identifies your website, and you need to install it on every page you want to track.
4. If you’re using WordPress, there are a number of plugins that will take all the annoyance out of adding the Analytics code. Click on your Plugins menu, then Add New. Search for “Google Analytics” and pick any with 4.5 stars or more. Install it, then paste in the UA code as directed. Done!
5. If you’re not using WordPress, click on the Analytics Help for clear instructions to suit your website. It’s not hard, but if you’re manually copying the code into 50 HTML pages it is gonna take longer than 5 minutes.
Do you use Google Analytics, or something else? Tell us in the comments!