The first thing I decided to do once the new site was ready is install Google Analytics. For those who don’t know, this allows you to track who is visiting your site, where they are coming from, and what they do while they are there. All very useful and interesting information. For anyone running an ecommerce site, or any site where results are important, this type of information is critical in order to asses how your site is doing and how it can be improved.

Installing Google Analytics is actually much easier than it sounds. You sign up for an account with Google, then install a snippet of code that Google gives you on every page you want to track. There is a plug for WordPress aptly called Google Analytics For Wordpress which needs to be installed for this purpose. The entire process (including some research to find it) took around 10 minutes.

Like many other products from Google, the Google Analytics service is free to use. Anything that helps the web in general is good for Google since the more people use the web the more money Google makes from their search marketing business.