Analyze web data

3.  Analyze web data. A visitor analytics package like Google Analytics is crucial for tracking the visitors on your website. Ecommerce or not, you need to know what your visitors are doing, how they are getting to your site, and which source of traffic yields you the best sales or leads. Measuring conversion rates is key. Most business owners make the mistake of only focusing on increasing traffic in order to increase their sales. Often a quick study of your visitors’ behavior on your website, as well as small tweaks to improve their experience can quickly increase your conversion rates.

There are many more systems out there to help you gather metrics about your business, but the three above can help you gather the minimum information you’ll need to help you make informed decisions. Keep in mind, that often data from multiple metric systems will be needed to help you draw conclusions about your decisions.
It’s extremely important to keep all the data accurate and up-to-date. If you have staff, train them and let them know important this data is to not only to the growth and success of your businesses but to their own decision making.
Remember, you may have made the best decisions in your business by going with your gut, but having great metrics to help your gut decisions become more accurate and easier to forecast will yield much better results.
Ilya Pozin is a serial entrepreneur best known for being the founder of Ciplex, a digital marketing and creative agency.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.