So, do you actually know what to do with your website once you have one?

Where to spend your budget

Do you need good graphics and excellent programming? Yes. But even more than that you need good content based on what your prospective website users are looking for and what they want to achieve while on your site.

And once you get them to the site for that content, you need to know where they came from, why they came, what they came for and what they do on the site. Where do they go, what do they click on and why.

"Most companies are not tracking their customers' behaviour adequately enough to understand (them)," says David Daniels, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix. "Businesses need to identify what influences their customers decisions."

Companies considering viral marketing and customer satisfaction when identifying loyal customers can reduce customer acquisition costs by 27% and increase average order sizes by up to 60%, according to Jupiter Media Metrix. But they don't seem to be doing it.

Making a Website effective

So how do you take a Website to the next level? How do you tell if changes you make have a positive or negative impact? You need to know how well is your website attracting attention, holding interest, building relationships, and accelerating the sales cycle. Only understanding what all those figures from your web logs really mean, can reveal the way to deliver what your users want.

Jupiter's analysts have found that customers tend to be loyal to companies that win their trust over time. But not enough companies are using customer data effectively. And they are allocating their customer and marketing analysis dollars incorrectly. According to Jupiter analysts, most companies underutilise the information they already have; 60% of companies spend money buying third-party data to analyse and segment their customers. Only 17% of executives said they recognized that they already have enough data collected about their customers.

Intelligent collection and analysis of your web metrics can tell you everything you need to know. And it will lead you to better design and content and a much higher ROI from your web spend.