How to Better Understand the Data and Metrics From Your Website

[This article was written by Anica Oaks.]

In today’s economy, data is arguably the most valuable of all assets. Even if you’re only running a small business with a basic website, you have access to huge amounts of data every day. The trick, though, is successfully interpreting that data. Here are four ways to better understand the data and metrics from your website.

Track Customer Conversions With Unique Shortened Links

One of the biggest challenges for a business with a diversified online presence is attributing sales and traffic to specific sources. An easy way to do this is by creating unique shortened links for each of your campaigns. This way, you can see which of your online activities are bringing people to your website.

Decide Which Metrics Are Important to You

With the huge amount of data being generated by modern websites, you won’t be able to use and interpret all of it. Decide on a few metrics that are important for your business and focus on those. It’s better to get good insights out of a small amount of your data than poor insights with all of it. If you’re unsure what you should be tracking, consider talking to a freelance data analyst or business intelligence specialist for help.

Monitor the Quality of the Data Itself

When you’re relying on website data to drive real-world business decisions, you need to be sure you’re working with good data. This can be accomplished with modern data quality monitoring software. Data quality monitoring involves validating data sets to weed out corrupted, incomplete or useless data. This, in turn, allows your business to derive better insights from the good data that remains.

Tie Abstract Data to Real World Events

One of the traps of data analysis is the potential to become too preoccupied with what the numbers say. To remain relevant, your data should be tied to real-world events and actions. Sales, click-throughs, email signups and other actions taken by potential customers are all good examples of things to track and optimize using data. If you end up too far into the weeds with respect to data analysis, you could end up losing sight of the real events your business fundamentally depends on.

Proper use of data is one of the most important skills for modern business owners. Using these tips, you can make better and more effective use of the data your website generates every day. While it will take time and effort, drawing useful insights from your data will allow your company to generate more sales and more revenue over the long haul.

Author Bio:

Freelance writer and web enthusiast