MARKET YOUR WEBSITE

• A page is very popular. Think about why that might be the case.
   Was your article especially well-written? Was your information 
  hitting on a recent trend? Were you offering a great product? 
  Knowing the reason for this might inspire some changes on 
  the page, or give you ideas for new material elsewhere on your site.
  
  
• A specific search query results in a lot of people finding your
   site via Google. Take a look at the keywords people enter,
   and check out what page they land on when coming from 
  Google—and think about the first impression you're making
   on them. As the saying goes, your visitors spend 99% of their
   time on sites other than yours. Maybe it's time to
   emphasize a link, or add an introductory blurb
   somewhere on the side.
  
  
• Your home page got heavy traffic yesterday. Check the referrer
   statistics to find out who linked to you, and track the source
   of the traffic to find commentary and feedback about your site. 
  React to the feedback, if needed.
  
  
• Your home page got heavy traffic yesterday, but you 
  don't see a spike from any specific referring site. 
   Perhaps your home page address received a
   mention in a radio or TV show!
  
  
• People spend mere seconds on most pages, but a full 
  minute on one other page. Compare the pages in question
   to find out why there's such a big time difference. Also,
   use your server log to trace the path they took through
   your site, retracing your visitors' steps.
  
  
• Your server was sluggish on Monday and you'd like to
   know why. Check your stats to look for a peak. Maybe
   there's a server script with suboptimal performance that needs rewriting?
• Many people filling out your order form suddenly leave
   at form page 2 out of 3. Maybe there's something on page 
  2 they didn't expect, so check it out and fix it if needed.
  
  
• What, traffic is dropping? Maybe it's time to take a break 
  from checking stats, and get the word out again—
  by contacting webmasters, talking to readers or customers,
   getting involved with the community, or adding great 
  content to your site.

In other words, all of these data points are tools equipping you 

to do a good job, whether you consider yourself a webmaster, 

an e-merchant, a news blogger, a web artist, or anything else

 or in-between. On the following pages, you will find hacks 

that could improve your mastering of this tool—and thus, your

 site. Additionally, there are tips and tricks that can help you 

market your site.

Getting Started with Google Analytics

To log in to Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics, 

Google Analytics has a couple of default boxes when you

 view a report for one of your web sites. What if you aren't

 happy with this selection?

At the time of this writing, the Google Analytics dashboard 

displays a map overlay and a visitors overview box, among

 others. But what if you already have a good handle on where 

your visitors come from, making the high-level information

 contained on the map overlay redundant?

Well, you can just change the dashboard settings. One way to

 do so is to grab a box and drag and drop it elsewhere on the page. 

You can also click the X in the upper-right corner of a box to 

make the element disappear. If you want to add new boxes,

 instead, first navigate to the Analytics page containing the

 information you're interested in, such as Content.