Website Performance Management

Every successful Website owner or manager knows there is more to building and maintaining a Website than hiring a designer and programmer. Sure, those are the bones, but for any success, a good site needs a heart, too. And the heart is made up of a site's visitors.

Following along with this metaphor, a site should be heart healthy. No clogged arteries, no cholesterol, no high blood pressure. In other words, your visitors should be able to enjoy your site with no stress over errors, have a clear and easy navigation path, and know they can come back and expect the same quality visit time after time.

A "heart healthy" Website builds trust. Your visitors will trust they can return happily, they will remember you, tell friends and associates, and traffic will build in a strong organic way.

The question then becomes, how do you know when a site is healthy? This is where performance management comes in. First you must get your site healthy, then you must nurture its health. To know what needs to be remedied, you need a good examination and excellent diagnostic tools. And Web analytics provide exactly the right tools.

It is important to have easy to read, comprehensive traffic and visitor statistics reports, so you will have the information necessary to gain incredible insight into your visitor's habits, preferences and behavior. A few important reports to have include,

• click path (the page trail a visitor blazes through your site),
• geographic mapping,
• real-time page popularity,
• keyword trends and ranking,
• search engine rankings,
• link tracking
• and so many more.

These reports will all provide you with the knowledge to manage your healthy, growing Website.

Good Website performance management centers on good Web analytics data. Accurate and timely visitor statistics are the key to good management. With a little research and trying free demos, trials and looking through online tutorials (tours) of various analytics services, you will find what suits you the best.