Website analytics is continuing to rise in the online world as an ever evolving strategy in website marketing.  Any business should be analyzed continuously to find weaknesses and ways to improve.  Imagine owning a grocery store, and having the ability to receive stats on the number of people visiting your store, how many of those walked down the fruits and vegetables isle, how many customers picked up an orange to smell it- returned it and moved on to the apples.  Or, even having the ability to find out where they came from and how they were referred to visit your store, what day/time of the week they went shopping, and to even be able to keep in touch through email for reminders of upcoming sales and deals.  What if you could get all this information for free?

Although software and online services are readily available at a pretty penny,  Avinash Kaushik (a notable web analysis guru) recommends adhering to a 10/90 rule: “10% of the budget should be spent on tools, and 90% spent on people (brains) who will be responsible for insights.”   Websites should at least use free services like, Google Analytics, Omniture, or Stat Counter to gather plenty of data of user activities.  Once a good amount of information is captured, analysis of that data (90% of your effort) uncovers the “whys” of user shopping habits, and navigational trends through a website.  Any website that puts even a minimal amount of effort into web analytics, will quickly find greater success with improved leads or sales.