Gooooooooals!!

No, we're not talking soccer. We're talking an easy way to turn the thousand web reports you probably have access to into something other than meaningless jumbles of numbers.

If you run Google Analytics or a similar data collection program on your website, you know that you have access to a huge wealth of data. And you also know that you probably run a lot of reports that seem really meaningful - until you try to do something about them.

"Time on site" is great - until you realize that maybe someone is spending a lot of time on your site because your ordering system is so confusing.

"Bounce rate" seems very telling - until you realize that someone calling in an order off your homepage would be counted as a bounce.

So much beautiful data - so little information. One way to start giving yourself some focus and some context is to focus on specific goals. But not your own. Your visitor's.

Google Analytics and other programs allow you to start thinking like a visitor and decide what actions constitute a successful visit. This is going to vary widely. It might be someone seeing a "Thank you for your purchase" page, or it might be getting someone to sign up for a newsletter or RSS feed. It might be a brochure download or a view of the "Contact Us" page. Take some time and really be creative with it. Then set goals in your software and start tracking those instead of thinking of a simple visit to your site is a success. You don't want visits - you want conversions. It seems simple, but it can do a long way to saving a lot of wasted time and reporting for the sake of reporting.

The point is - start thinking in terms of customer experience and what a successful web visit means for your particular company or organization. And this means...your website needs to have a PURPOSE (gasp!). But that's a blog for another day.