For many people, web analytics is a scary term, conjuring up mental images of failed math classes. That’s probably what brought you here: You were pondering methods of bringing more traffic to your website when someone brought up the term “web analytics“, and all of the sudden those nightmares kicked in.

But when you recovered, as the serious eCommerce entrepreneur you are, you got online with the goal of looking the term up. And now you’re here, you’re interested, and you’re a little confused. What are web analytics? Are they really worth investing in? What are they going to cost me? How much time do they take?

Don’t worry, all these questions have answers. And I’ll make sure to direct you towards the experts capable of helping you have the best possible experience with analytics.

What are Web Analytics?

Web analytics are any system of taking the information about your website visitors and using it to improve your website. Simple enough, right? Unfortunately, most people who own their own website are unaware of the tools and definitions that make this field useful. How many times have you sat down and wondered why your visitor count never goes up? Or wondered which pages on your website are visited the most?

Sound like exactly what you need to help improve your site? I thought so. But now the obvious question is, how do I use them?

Well, maybe you want to start simple, test this mysterious new system out before you really dedicate yourself to them. If this sounds like you, then I would suggest starting your own Facebook Analytics page, just to see what’s up. Even the website will give you a crash course on how to use their program and why it’s useful for those businesspeople trying to reach a larger audience via Facebook fan pages. For those of you more interested in taking a direct plunge into the deep end, you can try Google Analytics, or the Webtrends Data Extraction API.

But maybe you’re still nervous, checking your payroll to see if you can afford to add web analytics, and the personnel to manage it. This is understandable, after all, how can you be sure these programs will help you improve your traffic enough to help cover their costs.

The good news? They’re free. And you won’t even need to hire an extra webmaster to manage them. Like any other part of your business, so long as you know your goals, analytics will provide you with all the information you need.

However, like anything else, analytics has its dark side. Due to the nature of humans to misunderstand and underestimate things, some programs have gotten a bad reputation they’re still trying to overcome, often due more to mistakes made than any sort of deficiency in the program itself. However, since everyone reading this blog is interested in being informed consumers, that’s nothing you have to worry about.

It sounds time consuming, doesn’t it? Before you go leafing through your accounting book again, trying to figure out whether you can afford a second webmaster, or even a temp, just take a moment to breathe and gather your thoughts. You may find that it will take far less effort than you first thought, and in no time at all, you’ll be turning your website into a highly efficient, customer pleasing machine.

Well, that seems like enough for now. Even if you were all bright enough to find this site and read this article, we have to be careful, analytics are a powerful tool, and while even a beginner can use them, there are plenty of depths left to master, such as conversion rates and cross program compatibility, as well as plenty more experts willing to lend a hand. But for now, your best bet is to go out, get an analytics program, and plug it in to start gathering data. Take some time to really see how the innards of your website work. Then, you can come back here and learn some advanced methods for using the information you’ve gathered.