• Occam's Razor, Wednesday, June 4, 2008 12:45 PM

If some strange situation arose that forced you to choose only one analytics report--which one would it be? After poking fun at the absurdity of such a question, Avinash Kaushik suggests that "Outcomes by all traffic sources" would be his choice--regardless of service provider.

Kaushik says that this kind of report provides two crucial types of visitor analysis: "Sources of traffic, and hence just a hint of customer intent," and "Outcomes" (or the impact of the site on user activity, the industry and the world).

Knowing where your visitors come from can shed light on underdeveloped marketing channels (like Wikipedia or Stumbleupon), as well as which ones are your top drivers. Knowing what happens after users visit your site (whether they signed up for a newsletter, bought something, or bounced into oblivion) also yields insight into which features may need tweaking, or are working very well.

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