WebWise Solutions

I love metrics, and once I get ahold of them and turn them into reports, my clients love them too.

Web metrics are the single most sobering reality check for a site manager or editor. Little throwaway pieces you think will fade away can shock you with their staying power. (We ran a short 2-page tip called "Five Easy Pieces" in 1997 for an email package of one of our clients, and that puppy continues to generate clicks, year after year.) Conversely, we've also devoted significant space to massive articles with screenshots and Flash demos, only to find that they had the shelf-life of a basket of strawberries.

We love the Web Metrics tool made by Omniture - some of our clients have implemented it on their sites, to our great delight. It tracks every imaginable (and a few unimaginable) detail of a page's performance, and a customer's sojourn on a site.

There are a lot of other options, and Google's even dipping their toe into this space, so hang on for more about that. (We're testing it with one of our clients right now.)

But collecting the metrics is just Step 1. The real magic, and fun, is in studying them, analyzing them, and making informed decisions because of them.

It's addictive; Monk would be right at home. You get so you won't wait even an hour after you post a page to see if it's shepherding people to the Sales button, or making them leave within .02 seconds of landing on it. It gives you incredible power in a meeting, if you're the one with the data, and you're not afraid to use it.

If you don't use analytics on your site, run, don't walk, to look at your options. It's the only way to guarantee your site is doing what you want it to do.