Whatever the purpose of your website, one of the most important things you need to do is monitor your traffic (assuming that you want traffic–if not that’s another thing):

You need to know:

• Where it comes from (organic, PPC, referring websites, affiliates)
• How much of it there is
• Are people finding what they’re looking for (indicated by bounce rate–or where they go when they land)
• And whether those visits produce the desired result for you and your potential customers. If your traffic isn’t improving your bottom line then there’s something wrong.

I asked two of my fellow marketers who consistently get it right how they monitor their stats and here’s what I got:

Google Analytics is my favorite stats program because I know it well and it is far more powerful than other, expensive solutions. I once worked with a company that charged $5,000 per month for their Analytics program and it was quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever worked with.

The only drawback to Google Analytics is that it isn’t real-time, so I also use BLVDStatus (Premium) and let Clicky (Free version) for sites where I need to know what is going on at certain times of the day.

Glen from Viperchill.com

There are two basic ways to use analytics.  You can systematically monitor a variety of elements of your web pages,  making analytics part of your daily routine.  Or you can use analytics as a detective does, looking for clues.

I play detective.  Every now and then I snoop around.  Anything that is not as I would expect it to be is most likely either a warning or an opportunity.

For instance, let’s suppose my client’s website ranks at #2 for Keyword1 and at #7 for Keyword2, and both are expected to have the same traffic potential.  If I see that, despite a much lower ranking, Keyword2 is delivering more traffic, that makes me wonder what would happen if we focused more and ranking for Keyword2 – perhaps it has more traffic potential than we had assumed.  Or if Keyword2 has a lower bounce rate or keeps people longer on the site.  These are signs that we might want to change our focus.

In one case, I was noticing a lot of traffic from a country that had no interest in the site, so I was able to use a geographic filter to reduce spam by over 50%.  This was not the result of systematic application of analytics; this was nose-in-the-dirt detective work (the way I like it).

David Leonhardt of The Happy Guy Marketing

Personally, I am not so keen on Google for the simple reason that I’m wary of sharing all my entrepreneurial data with a search engine that aspires to complete superiority on the Web. OK I know they all do, but Google is closest to reaching that goal and for this reason I believe they’re dangerous: absolute power corrupts.

Here are a few stats monitoring services that are worth a second look:

Mint.com Mint helps you identify where the most interest is being generated and over what!

Webtrends.com Helps you target more effectively.

Awstats.com Although it’s free, Awstats gives you all the metrics you need to work out what you’re doing right, and what you’re doing wrong.

When it comes down to it, the most important thing is that you’re monitoring. There are dozens of good web traffic monitoring programs out there. Choose one and use it remorselessly!