Those of you who know me personally know I work in marketing, but that I have an engineering and technical background.

That probably explains why I enjoy putting all these sites together for people and watching them grow - or to see if they grow. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't; and that's where analytics come in.

I use Google's Analytics services to keep track of traffic trends on just about all the sites I operate. The Drupal content engine makes it a rather simple process. Drupal has a ready-built module for Google Analytics. All I have to do is download and install it, and then configure it with the site's Analytics profile code.

From that point Google's servers will keep track of how many visitors a site gets, where they come from, how they found the site, and all kind of other data. The engineering and techie in me loves the data. The marketing guy likes the information the data represents. That's where you start to draw an understanding of how well your site satisfies your visitors - whether they're finding what they're looking for and how easy it is to find it.

Most sites' owner want to get a periodic check on information like this. I usually configure a site to deliver a periodic snapshot of traffic, visitors, and search keywords. It doesn't take long to sit down with the site's owner to determine which reports he or she wants. Once decided, I'll set up Google Analytics to generate those reports automatically each reporting period.