You should first have a clear sense of your Web site business objectives.  There are lots of things that can be measured from a web site's activity.  When speaking with most marketing executives today, most will tell you that turning Web site visitors into Web site 'actions' and converting them is their most important Web site objective.

To better understand the power of your Web site investment, you must be collecting data on how your visitors interact on your Web site, and then studying that activity and behavior.

It's one thing to get users to your site, but it's another to get them to tell you who they are. Most Internet visitors protect their identities, making it very difficult to convert them into prospects and customers. 

Not unlike traditional advertising, the key is testing.
In addition to conversion rates, it's helpful to understand other activity data on your web site.  Advertising or Direct Mail 101 teaches us that they key to successful conversion is in testing one headline against another, different colored and sized envelopes, envelope teasers, black text or reversed text.  You only truly know which is most effective after you've tested one against another. 

On the web, such testing is rarely done.  A company will usually design a web site and redesign it completely a couple of years later.  The ongoing testing of various elements' effectiveness is typically an ignore activity. (mostly due to lack of time and resources)

Once you commit to testing, analysis and change, you'll want to gain an understanding of basic analytics terminology.  Your log files contain important data that we've all seen, but very few spend the time to act upon.  Sessions, visitors, hits, search engine visits, keywords searched, most common exit pages, average time per visit and lots more.

eMagine can help you define your web strategy's key metrics and a plan for frequent monitoring and analysis.