Website marketing success is in at least one respect based on the ability to reach your target audience, right? Well, how do you know if your advertising, marketing or SEO is effectively gaining the attention and response it deserves? Analytics.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of analytics providers - and we're not talking site counters and server logs here. WSM had the opportunity to speak with Tina Bean of Visistat today about their service - a real-time (and I mean real time) analytics solutions. I was most impressed with their interface, a graphical, immensely intuitive platform for the SMB community. VisiStat dynamically captures visitor activity, search engine keyword usage, geographical location, click path, and other important information such as referrals. Users add a small hidden "snippet" of HTML code to their Webpages and VisiStat collects information in real-time. The benefit is the increased opportunity to refine SEO keywords and terms and provide track-able indications of which engines rank a site and how much traffic you've received for a specific time frame and for a specific keyword. While the actual rank is not appeared, Visitstat has wisely include a "perform search" link so that you can see firsthand where your site places. With its add-on AdCam service, you can also track the ROI for any promotional platform - PPC, banners, SEO, etc. By knowing what works and what misses, priorities and dollars can be effectively applied right away, dramatically improving your return on investment. Of all the analytics systems I have had the opportunity to review, Visistat makes my top five.