Web Analytics is just about the most important thing for an online business. I would say, that you need your website with e-commerce features (including payment features) first :) – but then Web Analytics software is the next thing you should install.

If you get it right, Web Analytics software tells you where to optimize your website – which is also your business. And the best thing is, that you get data in real time. You don’t have to wait for monthly, quarterly or yearly reports – you can get insight and take action immediately! And that’s the most important thing. You should be able to change your paid marketing campaigns if they don’t return acceptable profit as soon as possible, because it will kill your budget if you don’t.

Luckily you can find unlimited resources on how to organize your Web Analytics software on the Internet. Dennis R. Mortensen, Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! repeated the success of his 2007 Christmas blog post, giving you the 18 most popular Web Analytics blog posts of 2007 – by posting the 27 most popular Web Analytics blog posts of 2008 in early December.

My 3 personal favorites from his post goes here:

1. The Ultimate Google Analytics Plugins, Hacks & Tricks Collection – By Bryan Eisenberg
2. The difference between a KPI and a Metric – By Dennis R. Mortensen
3. The “Action Dashboard” (An Alternative To Crappy Dashboards) – By Avinash Kaushik

Have a great year 2009!