Where do the users who visit your shop come from, and which products do they look at and for how long?
Finding that out at a physical store takes an enormous amount of effort.

Online, however, it's very easy.
By using the access analysis tools distributed free of charge by Google, Yahoo! and others, you can obtain highly accurate access analysis results with little effort.

This is said to be one of the major reasons why businesses around the world have shifted online.
With a physical store business, researching customer preferences and behavior requires a huge outlay.
That meant only large, well-funded companies could realistically identify problems and areas for improvement.

Even so, not many site owners make effective use of access analysis tools despite having them readily available.
In particular, it often seems that the very executives who ought to be the most interested in the company are the ones who shy away from them.

One reason is that they aren't comfortable using a computer to work with access analysis tools, but that's not the whole story.
After all, there are plenty of executives who show no interest in the access analysis reports their computer-savvy staff worked hard to produce, or who offer wide-of-the-mark opinions about them.

So why can't these executives turn access analysis reports into improvements? It's because there are several issues between executives and the web manager.

Issue 1: Executives and staff don't share an understanding of the terminology

The metrics in access analysis reports use a lot of technical jargon. 'Sessions', 'active users', 'PV', 'conversions' and so on... If you're not used to them, just hearing the terms is enough to make you lose the will to listen to the rest (laughs).
When preparing a report for executives, staff should replace these terms with wording that's as easy to understand as possible, or explain them in advance so everyone shares the same understanding.

Issue 2: There's no understanding of how the metric relates to results

At the end of the day, more than half of an executive's thinking is taken up with 'So what does this mean for the results?'
Staff, on the other hand, tend to start their reports with the process.
'Visitor numbers were like this, and access numbers were like that... and so on and so forth... and so the results came out this way.'
Executives stop listening partway through.
You should report in this order: what are the results, then which metrics are driving those results, and what trends are those metrics showing?

Issue 3: No targets have been set in advance

Targets are set for sales and results, but in many cases no targets are set for the metrics that influence those results.
Without targets, judgments about whether the current situation is a good trend or not become inconsistent.
By setting targets in advance for the metrics you consider important, just as you do for results, people become able to take an interest in the numbers in access analysis reports.

If web managers keep these points in mind, they won't have to spend more time than necessary creating reports, and executives will be able to grasp the overall trends quickly.
That lets everyone focus on spotting problems and areas for improvement.