Your reporting procedures

[TheShortStack]

As I'm growing, one of the areas I really need to improve in is my reporting and so I'd really like to know how you guys go about it and what you report on?

Are you purely interested in your revenue at the end of the month? Or do you also look at:

- Weekly search position for main keywords?
- Traffic volumes on your main site(s)?
- Principal sources of traffic?
- Clicks and impressions?
- Other things that I haven't even thought about?

Also, where do you record this information? Is it all in an Excel spreadsheet? And if so, does anyone recommend any good templates to use?

Apologies in advance if this seems like a bit of a nothing-of-a-post. I guess it is at the moment as I don't really know what I should be doing

Thanks loads for the help

[Unknown Webmaster]

I spend a lot of time looking at which traffic sources and keywords are bringing in visitors, who end up leaving my site through an affiliate link.

I use Advanced Web Rankings to track how my sites rank for different keywords - I haven't been using it for long enough to give it a definitive thumbs up or down, but it generates pretty graphs, and keeps me from searching for my own keywords every 5 minutes.

[TheShortStack]

That looks like a pretty decent piece of software UW - would definitely be interested to hear how you find it.

Anyone else got anything to add? I'd find it really useful to know what metrics you track on a monthly basis ...

[Planet Mark]

Hey Shortstack,

Just thinking that this thread might benefit from being in the main discussion area... after all business reporting is a core activity - not so much a coffee shop thing.

My main 'other thing' to add would be which pages / links are your conversions actually going through... and how did they get to those pages / links in the first place.

Cheers, Mark

[TheShortStack]

Just thinking that this thread might benefit from being in the main discussion area... after all business reporting is a core activity - not so much a coffee shop thing.

Thanks Mark - to be honest, I wasn't quite sure where to post this.

Perhaps a mod could move this to the main area if they come across this?

Cheers,

[pipeline]

I figure out revenues, then expenses, then hand it to my accountant, then write a check, then weep like a little girl for a couple weeks. Hope that helps.

[themike537]

I figure out revenues, then expenses, then hand it to my accountant, then write a check, then weep like a little girl for a couple weeks. Hope that helps.

Lol, we've got the same reporting methods.