Darren Rowse at Problogger.net shares a user’s story as well as his own about how just checking their blog stats led them to understand some very lucrative things about what their audience was interested in.
There’s the obvious lesson there that checking your stats is important. But I also like to look at it another way, and that’s that checking your stats can be actually be an idea generator. In Darren’s case, he noticed that nobody was interested in his personal photos, but he was getting a steady stream of traffic to a camera review that was secondary to him, but the most important thing to his visitors. This led Darren to the idea of turning his blog into a camera reviews blog which is lucrative for him today.
So, the next time you’re in a rut trying to come up with some new ideas about your ecommerce site, blog, web app, or whatever it is you’re tracking, try taking a look at what types of features and content your users are interested in. It may just lead you to some surprising conclusions that end up putting more money in your company’s pocket.