An essential step to maximizing your earning potential is knowing and understanding every aspect of your website, and how your visitors interact with it.  Half the battle is getting traffic to your site, and the other half is getting the most out of each visitor.  The ultimate goal of website analytics is to help you improve your site by pinpointing weaknesses in ad copy and layout/design.  A poorly designed or worded website has the potential to increase sales or desired actions by hundreds of percentages.  Below I will provide you with an overview of how you can use a free analytics tool provided by Google to help you maximize your website's usability and profits.

Google Analytics

    Google provides website owners with a free tool to measure many aspects of your website by placing a simple code at the bottom of each page.   You can create your free account here.  With Google Analytics you can analyze 5 different aspects of your traffic/website.

• Visitors
  In the visitors section, the most basic and fundamental type of data provided is the amount of visitors and page views your website has received within the specified time frame.  It also provides you with the average amount of time spent on the website, how many visitors leave your website after the first page visit (bounce ratio), and how many new visitors your site has received.
  
  There are also sub-sections that allow you to see where your visitors come from geographically, which browsers  they use, languages, etc..!
  
  
• Traffic Sources
  The traffic sources allow you to see exactly where your visitors are coming from. Whether it's from a search engine, another referring website, or direct traffic, it covers it all.  One of the most useful features of Google Analytics is to see exactly which keywords were typed to reach your website from the different search engines.  This lets you know exactly which keywords you're ranking for.
  
  
• Content
  The primary purpose of the content section is to let you know which pages on your website are the most popular.  It also lets you know how much time is spent on each page, and which pages have the highest bounce ratio (visitors leaving).
  
  
• Goals
  Google Analytics lets you setup goals.  A goal is a desired action the visitor can take on your site.  This could be a purchase, a form being filled out, or simply a page being viewed.  In the goal tab it provides you information with how many visitors reached tha goal and other information like where they came from.
  
  
• Ecommerce
  If you run an ecommerce website (a website in which you sell products), Analytics provides you with information specific to the purchases made through your website.

 

As you can see, Google Analytics allows you to measure almost every metric possible about your visitors.  But there's also another free Google service that allows you to take it a step further.  It's called Google Website Optimizer.


Google Website Optimizer

    Google Website Optimizer allows you to perform A/B Split testing and multivariate testing on your website.  The purpose is to help you determine which variations of a single page result in more desired actions (such as purchases or forms being filled out). 

• A/B Split Testing
  This type of testing allows you to change one variable of a single page and determine which results in a higher percentage of the desired action.  It could be as simple as changing an image, a title change, a location of an order button, etc..!
  
  
• Multivariate Testing
  This type of test allows you to test more than one (5, 10, even 20) different changes to a single page at once.
  

    Split testing your website is an absolutely crucial aspect of your profitability.  You may *think* you have the most optimized page in the world, but until you test it, you will never know.  And to add to that, there's a 99% chance you're wrong!  Split testing allows you to see how thousands of visitors interpret your page instead of your own speculations.  A simple 5% increase in sales as a result of a change you overlooked could be the difference between thousands of dollars.

    Using Google Analytics in conjunction with Website Optimizer will allow you to take full control of the elements you can control in order to maximize your website's profitability.