There is nothing more frustrating than having an encyclopedic amount of information at your fingertips, and nary the time to peruse, let alone use, it.
Focused as we are on testing subject lines, tweeting, developing campaigns, and tracking conversions, we often lack the time or attention to really listen to what our web analytics data is trying to tell us.
Happily, automated reporting, customized dashboards, and activity alerts are simple ways you can proactively take control of your data.
1. Activity Alerts
Use alerts to your advantage, by forcing your data to come to you.
Benchmark your average – or acceptable – number of daily site visitors, page views, downloads, sales orders, and more, and set your solution to alert you by email when the levels hit a certain value above or below.
This frees you to focus on other things until you need to pay more attention to what’s working – or what’s not. Either way, you’ll be able to recognize changes quickly, and take practical steps as needed.
2. Dashboards
Customized dashboards allow a quick understanding of performance by tracking your critical data in an easy to understand snapshot. Effective dashboards can be a very powerful communication tool, and help you make smart, data-driven decisions.
Dashboard layouts and attractiveness vary by web analytics solution, but contain at minimum fundamental data like page views, visitor numbers, conversions such as downloads and orders, sales funnel performance, top referrers, and search keyword results.
Consult your analytics tutorials or online marketing expert for assistance in setting up the best dashboard for you.
3. Automated Reports
Like activity alerts, automated reports free up time, so you can focus on using the data to make smart marketing decisions - instead of spending time compiling it.
Detailed and comprehensive reports can be set up to include any customized data you choose, and made available for download in a transmittable or processable format, such as PDF, XML, CSV, or TSV.
Even better, most systems have an email feature to send the reports to yourself (or someone else). Scheduled email reports can be set according to any frequency you choose – daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
Better yet, you can include a date comparison to provide performance against the previous reporting period.
Convinced? Take a little time to set up to automate your web analytics today, and start letting the data speak for itself.
Kristina Smith is an Associate Writer with Single Entry Point Marketing. She brings 9 years of experience in online marketing, brand building, and copywriting, specializing in the advertising, publishing, and travel industries. She spends her free time 
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