• How are visitors finding my site?
• When they get there, what do they do?
• Are they taking the desired action that I want them to take?
• At what points are they falling off from the intended process?
• What geographical regions are these visitors located in?
• What is the most popular content on my site?
• Do certain visitor segments respond differently to campaigns or to my site than others?
• Which of my online marketing campaigns are the most effective at drawing visitors to the site and converting them into customers?
• Are customers that are coming to my site for support finding their answers?
• How effective am I at reaching and engaging target demographics in my audience?

The first target of understanding those who visit your site is where are they coming from, a search engine, an associated website, etc. Which one of the marketing channels that you employ are most effective, and what is the returned derived from that ad spend. Is the ROI sufficient, should I increase the ad spend, or should I evaluate other channels?

Once I have captured the visitor, did they leave right away, or did they browse through my site. What was the path that they took, was it the one that was envisioned to lead to the proper conversion which was desired, or did the potential client abandon?

Geographically where are the visitors from? Were they from my targeted market, or have you uncovered a new avenue to direct sales efforts towards. If you are advertising to a diverse market, does one segment behave differently then another one? Did one of your campaigns lead to a better conversion rate from a targeted audience, and was that conversions with in the demographic that I expected it to come from, and did it meet our target benchmarks from that demographic.

All of this and more can be answered by looking at the audience that is reviewing the content on your site. A review of those who traffic your site, and an analyses of the path and locations that your visitor viewed, can lead you to make decisions on how to design a site, how to construct the landing/offer pages for a targeted audience. These site usability studies do more then aid in future site designs, they permit a deeper understanding of your target audience. In addition these efforts will lead to a much greater understanding of your visitors.

These analytic results can also lead you to a better understand of how to target the advertising toward your client audience. Are ads on the search engines more effective then banners on associated websites/portals, or is the old fashion targeted mailing the best avenue to cover, and meet your audience. In simple means analysis of your visitors, and content that they review can lead to:

• Optimize marketing campaigns
• Improved content, and search engine marketing efforts
• Increase website conversions
• More profitable sales activity
• Determination of the ROI of specific pages
• Greater targeted and more cost effective business processes

The bottom line is understanding your client will make it more easy to sell to them. The best way short of standing at the door asking them to fill out a survey is to review the how, where, when and why from your website analytics provider. Attempting to discern why the visitor selected one path over another will help you to understand how to better layout your sites design, or text content to encourage the desired conversion. Additional reviewing the eatery and exit points for your visitor will uncover potential strengths, and weaknesses in your sites design. Continuous reviewing of analytic information, and implementation of the solutions developed from this research will lead to a healthier bottom line.

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