Getting a Targeted Visitor to a website is a waste of time and money if you've got no idea what 98% of them do when they get there.

I'm assuming that if you have a website selling products that your conversion rate is at least 2%. So you should know at least what 2 out of every 100 targeted visitors do and that's make a purchase.

But do you know what they did before they made a purchase and if they'd have purchased sooner, if it were not for some issue they had with your website?

How much do you know about what 98 out of 100 or 98% of your targeted visitors are doing? If the answer is a big fat zero, you're throwing money down the drain and missing a golden opportunity to learn from every targeted visitor not just 2% of them.

If you could discover a way to stop and ask every targeted visitor why they're leaving your website and they'd give you a reply, would you be interested?

Sure you would, what website owner wouldn't. OK if you said No, then you'd better stop reading this now. Of course no such way exists to stop and ask every leaving targeted visitor. Until it does the only way to learn from a targeted visitor is ask them to complete a survey or learn about their behaviour on a website using targeted visitor tracking.

If you're using just web hosting stats to tell you what your targeted visitor is doing then you're putting yourself at a very big disadvantage. So you know what countries your traffic comes from, what URL's referred them, the total number of pages viewed each day and what part of the day gets most traffic. Well that's better than nothing.

If you have a good web hosting stats package you may even know how much time a targeted visitor group spends on your site. From this at least you know how many visitors found your site interesting enough to stay longer than 30 seconds.

But do you know exactly which pages are viewed each day, what page links are clicked, or if running Adsense Ads, what Ad your targeted visitor clicked on?

If you're still wondering exactly how tracking what a targeted visitor does on you website can help you, let me explain.

By tracking what pages get the most views day by day, you can tell what pages a targeted visitor finds interesting.

If you change the content of a page you can track how many more, or less times the page is viewed. By learning what content interests a visitor you can supply more of it rather than guessing what they're interested in. More interesting relevant content means potentially more visitors.

By tracking changes in the navigation to a page you can tell if the page then gets more visits.

Pages could have content that a targeted visitor would find interesting but your existing navigation may be what's stopping them from finding them. By making a change to the navigation and tracking page views for that page over the following days, you can compare the results with what you had before the change was made.

By tracking any Adsense Ads you know which Ads are being clicked on and can therefore increase your exposure for those Ads.

You do this by creating similar content pages that will feature that type of Ad. This gives you the opportunity to get more Adsense revenue.

By tracking a targeted visitor returning to your website after clicking away you can judge how interesting they find your website.

How much do you know about what your targeted visitor does on your website before they made a purchase?

Tracking tells you what links a purchaser clicked on, what pages they viewed before they purchased and even if they came from one of your own Ads.

It's an established fact that most people don't make a purchase on the first visit. They will have a look around a website, then come back hours or days later, perhaps even several more times before they make a purchase.

It's possible to track all this activity and even have a report emailed to you after your targeted visitor buys.

Armed with this sort of information you can see how often the purchaser returned before they made a purchase, on what dates and what pages they viewed.

If they kept coming back to the same page they could have found something they were unsure about. This gives you the chance to take a look at that page, experiment with some changes and track the results.

If you think targeted visitor tracking is only within the reach of big corporate websites with big budgets you'd be mistaken. You can implement all the targeted visitor tracking I've described on any website, for a single payment of less than $120 and no monthly fees.

A targeted visitor tracking system that enabled you to make just minor improvements to your website could pay for itself in 17 days!

Let's say you get 45 targeted visitors to your website every day and 2% of them buy a product costing $47. Your website earnings would be 45 x 2% x $47 or $42.30 per day.

Now let's assume by using targeted visitor tracking you learn enough from your visitor behaviour to make some improvements to the content and navigation on your website.

Let's further assume your changes improve your website conversion rate from 2% to 2.1% and increase the number of targeted visitors from 45 per day to 50 per day because they find your content more relevant and interesting.

Doing the same math's again but with 50 targeted visitors and 2.1% purchasing the same $47 product, the website earnings would be 50 x 2.1% x $47 or $49.35 per day.

This means the minor improvements made from what you learned from your targeted visitor tracking have increased your website earnings from $42.30 per day to $49.35 per day, an increase of $7.05 per day.

This means from extra earnings of $7.05 per day and a targeted visitor tracking system costing $120 or less, the system paid for itself in 120/7.05 or 17 days.

In the 2nd part of this article Tracking a Targeted Visitor on Your Website I describe in detail, two systems that any website owner can use for targeted visitor tracking.

Now you have no excuse for gaining access to targeted visitor information you never knew you could and use it to your advantage.

Conclusion

Like many website owners you probably spend time and money getting targeted visitor traffic to your website only to get around 2% making a purchase. But you're pouring money down the drain if you don't learn from the 98% who didn't buy from you.

The only way to learn from a visitor is to ask them, or learn from their behaviour by finding out where they go and what they do on your website. The latter requires targeted visitor tracking systems in place on your website.

Even if what you learned from this targeted visitor tracking enabled you to make only minor improvements to your website, the system could pay for itself in 17 days.

About the author: Tony Simpson, Advises on Website Design, Promotion and Optimization. He also offers website design reviews through his Restricted Access Membership which is currently free to join, once you are accepted. The 2nd part of his article entitled "Tracking a Targeted Visitor on Your Website" is at http://www .webpageaddons.com/stp/targetedvisitor2