All too often we come across companies running analytics packages on their websites, for nothing more constructive than to count the volume of 'hits'. Just to blow away a few myths, 'hits' are not visitors! 'Hits' are the number of requests made to the server, which includes images, etc. Thereby a page with 10 images on it will record 10 'hits' plus the html page request.

That said in a recent study of 500 professionals surveyed by the Web Analytics Association (WAA), training was top of the agenda to make better use of analytics.

Interestingly they found that 74% of those surveyed plan to invest in consulting and staffing to make the most of their existing analytics tools and derive actions from the data already available.

This makes a refreshing change in attitude. Whilst some companies utilise their traffic analytics very well, to others the whole process of internet marketing is traffic and more traffic. In point of fact, tracking user trends and identifying problem areas to increase the positive user experience, ultimately moving to a 'conversion', would be a much better way of building sales.

Matt Paines