A 10-Minute Guide to Web Analytics
Understanding Web Analytics
When you want to know more about who is visiting your website and what they're doing there, you need web analytics. But what is this thing called web analytics?
Put simply, web analytics is the collection and analysis of data relating to website visitors. It's a way to measure the traffic to your website and then find out what visitors are doing during their visits.
What kind of data are measured? Web analytics tracks such metrics as pageviews, visits, unique visitors, and the like. The resulting analysis examines both the quantity and quality of visitors to a site.
The goal of web analytics is to better understand how a website is being used—and apply that information to optimize the site's usage. It's more than just basic data collection; it's an attempt to learn more about how people use a site, and why.