"With free programs like Google Analytics," says Corte Swearingen in a post at the SmallBiz Marketing Tips blog, "acquiring data is not the issue—the challenge is finding a way to improve your bottom line using that data."

Swearingen discussed the issue with Jason Burby, author of Actionable Web Analytics, and here are some key takeaways from their conversation:

To make sense of the data, you first need clear goals. "Companies typically just jump right into the tracking tool and start looking at basic traffic data without really stepping back and defining the overall web channel goals," Burby told Swearingen. "Unfortunately when the first step of defining goals is skipped, it is really difficult to be successful in the [subsequent steps] and nearly impossible to really be successful with Web Analytics."

Use Web analytics to look forward, not backward. According to Burby, many companies wonder what the data tells them about last month: instead, they should use it to determine what will happen next month.

Some companies might never need anything more than Google Analytics. "I encourage small businesses to start there and get their feet wet with web analytics," said Burby. "[O]nce they max out the power of Google Analytics they can step up to one of the more sophisticated tools and really take advantage of the power of those tools." But, he allows, not all businesses will reach that point.

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