Whether you run a personal, non-profit blog or a business, one of the hardest things there is to do when starting a website is building traffic. Think about it: There are billions of websites each one vying for visitors. This is why when a person finally does build a visitor base it becomes so important to keep those visitors returning to that site. However, just as important as it is to get returning traffic to your site, it is equally important to ensure that your visitors stay and delve deeper into your site - in other words, you have to keep them from bouncing away from your site. A bounce is when a visitor only views a single page on your website and leaves before a specific session-timeout occurs or before he/she completes whatever action it is that you desire of them. Thus it is better when a lower percentage of your visitors decide to bounce or leave your site than prefer to stay. As a webmaster, I am always researching statistics about my visitors and using that information to get more visitors, keep the ones I have and to make the visitors I do have complete whatever action it is that I want them to complete.


This is where site analytics come into play. Analytics, put simply, are statistics gathered by you or by some third party about the visitors who come to your site. This data can be as simple as how many people visited your site in a given period (a counter) or as sophisticated as information on where those visitors came from, what keywords they used, how many pages they visited, which pages they viewed and so on. The important thing is that the more you know about your visitors the better prepared you are to make decisions that will lower your bounce rate and increase sales or readership as the case may be. I use several methods for keeping track of visitor traffic. Most are give you basic day to day statistics about my visitors but many of these methods leave questions about your viewers unanswered. Most, for example, dont tell you what your viewers do once they get to your site.

There is one site that I found by accident that helps fills the gap left by other analytics sites - ClickTale
This is a site that actually records the screen of the visitors to your site and essentially puts you over the shoulder of those visitors. This site lets you to see what sections of your page your visitors view and not just which pages they visit. With this site you could determine whether your site is too complicated to navigate one of my pet peeves as a consumer. This site lets you see how long your visitors viewed a particular article or product as well as what sections of your pages they viewed the most. Conversely, it could help you to determine what the least popular sections, products or forms on your pages are and thus can help you make decisions that enable you to enrich your visitors experience. This in turns can help you drive up sales.

How does it work? ClickTale gives you two small pieces of script to insert into your home page and presto minutes later you will actually be watching videos that show every mouse move and click each visitor to your site makes. Talk about intelligence gathering. Google Analytics has nothing like this. ClickTale has a free basic membership which is for blog owners and personal sites and paid services for business owners who are serious about driving down bounce rates and driving up sales. Watch your visitors and learn.By: Carl MitchellArticle Directory: http://www.articledashboard.comI am a native Missourian with a B.A. in English and minors in creative writing and Journalism. I attended the University of Missouri and edited have several newspapers and newsletters. I am also an affiliate marketer and receive compensation for the links in this article. My site is www.enjoylearning.net/