You may remember the old web site traffic counters of the late 1990s. They looked clunky, and worse yet, if you only had yourself and your mom looking at your website, it showed. Still, people couldn’t help themselves from adding the counters, even if the results were embarrassing.

At some point, Google Analytics entered the game, and provided colorful charts to anyone who could insert a paragraph’s worth of gobble-de-gook HTML code. Better yet, you could look at your website statistics without everyone else seeing them!

Google Analytics is pretty amazing, but even more amazing is how many people don’t ever check theirs. Sure, you have to log into yet another Google Product, for which you probably set up a different username and password–a password which you promptly forgot. But not checking your website analytics is just as bad as not monitoring your sales. Or not keeping track of when you need to buy coffee next. It can lead to crisis.

This is particularly true if you are paying to advertise your website anywhere. The worst thing that could happen is that you throw $300 a month into an online ad (or three hours of your time into social media) and you don’t even know that it is not generating any traffic!

So please, please install Google Analytics and check it regularly! If you have been receiving emails you don’t understand from Google Analytics telling you that you need to upgrade because something is going to happen in 2024, get in touch with us NOW. It may seem like you don’t need to take action now, but a very obvious thing to do when checking your website stats is to compare them to the same month in the previous year. If you don’t complete the upgrade now, your site won’t be collecting data in the new Google Analytics. That means if you wait until the last minute to upgrade, you won’t be able to compare to the previous year. It will be like starting your web traffic counter all over at zero.

I have to admit that even I cannot remember to do my Google Analytics. Fortunately we have great analytics people on staff, who will look up your statistics for you, point out anything that looks strange, and email the whole thing (with a pretty colored line graph) to you each month for just $39. Or you can do it yourself.

Just make sure you choose one of those options, and see how it changes the focus of your online promotions.

To subscribe to our web traffic analytics service (and get your web traffic stats emailed to you each month) please fill out our contact form today. We work with companies and organizations of all sizes.