A reliable web statistics toolkit can help you gauge success by telling you:

• Referrals - Where people found your site, such as links from other websites, search engines and keyword phrases, online ads, bookmarks, etc.
• Visitors - The number of people who visited your site during a specified period - and not just "hits." Some stat tools call this "sessions."
• Pages - Shows which pages of your site visitors clicked through, from the page entered to the page exited. Also called "paths."
• Time on Site - Measures the length of time visitors stayed on your site. Visits that last 20 seconds or more is what you want, since most customers spend longer amounts of time in order to check out products.
• Downloads - The number of times your white papers, videos, podcasts, trial software, etc. has been downloaded.

What other marketing collateral allows you to see this kind of data? None! Analyzing your web stats on a regular, ongoing basis is the only accurate way to track how you're doing against your strategic marketing objectives; it then allows for knowledgeable testing and modifying marketing campaigns, as well as efficiently allocating your investment dollars.

Some key performance indicators:

• Conversion rate - the probability of web visitors delivering the most wanted response, which is buying from you
• Percent of new (or unique) visitors on your website
• Ratio of new to returning visitors on your site
• Amount of time a visitor remains on your site during an average visit
• Page "stickiness" - the landing pages' probability to successfully retain a visitor

There are several good web analytics tools available: Click Tracks, Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst. Select one.

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