How old am I? I'm old enough to remember when TV commercials started listing their websites at the bottom of the screen. I'm old enough to remember that when you went to those websites they were basically just one page with some text and maybe a picture or two about the company or products. I'm old enough to remember that anything more than that took several minutes to load and possibly made your computer crash. But my favorite old-time internet memory (besides the dancing baby and the hamster dance song) were the little tickers at the bottom of the site that said how many visitors had been there.
We've come a long way, huh?
Those little tickers were some of the earliest "likes" and analytics of the world wide web. Now, we can see not only how many people view our websites, but if they did so on a computer, phone, or tablet; what browser they were using; how long they stayed on the site; what pages they visited and so much more.
So, what's the point?
More than just the ego-boost those little tickers gave us, analytics help us see if where our websites are working well and where they need changes. It's kind of like an author using an editor to help make sure the story is clear, there are no typos or grammatical errors, and most importantly no huge plot holes that we couldn't see because we know the whole story and have seen all of the different drafts. When we create our websites, we know what's happening and what the story is. When users visit our sites, the story may not be quite so clear, so studying the analytics can help us edit our site to better match user's expectations and needs.
Do you think the analytics will tell me I need the hamster dance song? Because it sure is stuck in my head, now.
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