You can’t manage what you can’t measure. What do you know about the visitors going to your website? Do you know how many people are visiting? How about what pages they’re going to and how long they’re staying?

With a simple addition to your website, all of this information is right at your fingertips which will allow you to tweak your website according to what your visitors are looking for. It’ll allow you to steer people to the important information that you want your visitors to see, keeping visitors on your website longer, which will bolster your credibility, helping you earn their trust.

The software I’m talking about is an Analytics program. One of the more popular ones is Google Analytics, and is free at http://www.google.com/analytics/

Knowing visitor info will let you know what your visitors find important and will allow you to adjust your site accordingly- like putting a clear call to action on the popular pages.

Think of it this way- If you're in business, you probably collect stats about how people found out about you, where they come from, how much of your business is repeat business and how much is new business. Analytics software is the equivalent of these stats but with far more detail to give you an accurate and comprehensive picture of people's behavior on your site.

Some of the things you can find out with Analytics:

• Number of visitors visiting your site- how many are new, how many have been there before. 
• Visitor’s geographical location. Where are you targeting? Is that where your visitors are coming from? 
• Referring websites. See who's linking to you, what search engines like your site, and who's typing your site address directly. This will also give you some great insight as to what social networks are working for you and which aren’t so you’ll know where to spend more of your time. 
• Time spent on your site. Do you need to make your navigation easier? People have no patience for tough to navigate websites. If they can't find the information they're looking for within a few seconds, they'll leave to find it somewhere else. Definitely apply the K.I.S.S. principle here. 
• Most / least popular pages. Is there a clear path to the info you want them to see? 
• And more...

The days of having a website "because everyone else has one" are over. Think of your website as part of your sales team. It speaks for your company when you aren’t and is often the first place people go to determine if you’re legitimate. Make sure your website is communicating the right message, in the most effective way possible.