I would like to discuss the importance of analytics, reporting and benchmarking.

It is very key that from a very begging of your business your define the most important metrics for your business and monthly measure your progress.

If you are running an online business those metrics will be visitors to your website, unique user, traffic sources, conversion rate etc. If it is an offline business you anyway need to keep track of all the leads (potential customers), how they find you and how they convert (purchase your product or a service)

If you have already set up your website, the first thing to do is to set up your Google Analytics account to track the amount of visitors etc. There are many resources on how to do it easily or ask your technician for help. When this is done, create an Microsoft Excel or Google Table where you will track the most important numbers for your business.

They will differ from industry to industry but basically what you need to be tracking is how many people are coming to your site, how and if they are buying your product or service. Please track this statistics daily, weekly and make monthly reports on the dynamics how it is changing. Like this you can straight away see what is going well and what not and if you have any seasonal dependence. This will help you to plan for the next week or month and distribute your effort accordingly.

To keep an overview it is also extremely helpful to benchmark (compare) how your business is doing compared to your competitors. You can find out what traffic they have the sources of the traffic and the demographics on SimiliarWeb. Record this information, because it might give you few insights and help you grow your business.

In the beginning you might be discouraged by your results, I can only tell you do not be. It always takes time to establish your name online or offline and develop a customer base. You should instead celebrate your successes and multiply what works.

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