Having all this data from Google Analytics readily available (coming soon to your iPhone!) is glorious and wonderful, but let me caution you. Watching the data is really fun, but its pointless unless you ACT on it.

Your website analytics are there for a reason, to help you improve your business, your site, your blog, whatever it is you’re tracking. Be sure to look for opportunities to make changes and improve your conversions. Here are a few things to help you get off the sidelines and start playing in the game!

1) Set up goals - Yes it takes some thinking and a few minutes to put it in place, but the data is INVALUABLE! If you’re not running goals, then you can’t ever figure out how to get more people to do what it is you hope they do on your site.

2) Look for spikes in traffic - What led to this spike? Can you do that again? What was the conversion rate with the big influx? Could it be improved if you can replicate the spike?

3) Look for dips in traffic - Where did everyone go? Find out why and aim to prevent that from happening again.

4) Look for holes - Getting a lot of traffic from one part of the country, but not the other? One foreign language but not another? Seeing inconsistencies, gaps, or holes can help you identify opportunities to increase your user base.