Since 1995 when ‘e-commerce’ started becoming mainstream, entire industries that are wholly web-based have emerged, and traditional businesses have turned to the Web for an ever increasing contribution to their revenues.

It is estimated that more than 94% of America’s active users have a broadband connection to the Web. Consumers now reflexively go online to window-shop, educate themselves, and generally spend more of their waking hours surfing the web.

It’s imperative for every business to follow and understand their target customers’ online behavior. These businesses have to then structure their online presence and their off-line, traditional processes to meet the needs of their customers.

To achieve these objectives, decision makers are increasingly adopting Web Analytics. On March 20, 2007, a Google search for “web analytics” + definition displayed 642,000 results and 21 months later, December 31st, 2008, it returned 138,000,000 results: 21,395% growth! This is but one base level indicator of the rapid rise and widespread recognition of Web Analytics as vital for better business decisions and strategy.

Simply put, Web Analytics, through the rigorous mining and analysis of data, better understands and improves the experiences of visitors to a site. This deeper understanding helps achieve desired outcomes such as greater engagement with a brand or company, or higher revenues by perhaps identifying what flavor of “online merchandising” leads customers to transact more business on a certain Web page.

The early, rudimentary practice of tracking online visitors using server log files or by embedding JavaScript code on sites constituted the data gathering and the beginnings of a new revolution called Web Analytics.

Web Analytics often involves the effortless collection of online data. Lord Kelvin said “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it!” Once you set some basic tags for your site, all visitors’ information can get tracked on any of a number of web analytics tools.

Compared to other channels and media, data about online business, visitors, and transactions is generally readily available at minimal cost and within a short duration—often on a real-time basis. Businesses can react rapidly to positive and negative trends, seize opportunities and quickly ward off threats.

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