The value of Analytics!

The more you know about your wesbite's users the more succesful your website can become. It is therefore essential that you regulary check the stats in whichever analytics software you use (Google Analytics is a favourite as it comprehensive and free). By monitoring the habits of your users you can determine what content is the most popular, how your visitors have found your website and whether they are returning visitors. Obvioulsy with this information you can make informed decisions about where to advertise, which content you should develop and whether your site has that all important stickyness (i.e. is your content interesting enough to persuade users to keep coming back).

From our perspective having good data about a site and its visitors is invaluable. We were recently approached by the Midlothian Tourism Forum which is a group of businesses involved in Tourist Attractions, Accommodation Providers and Tour Operators in Midlothian. They had the foresight to install stats on the creation of the site which enables us to determine how users have found and interacted with the site in the past and lets us make informed desicions about how best to promote the site in the future.