Web analytics are important to small businesses. But understanding analytics can be tricky. Here are 11 helpful blog posts — written for small businesses — that can help.

“Best Web Metrics / KPIs for a Small, Medium or Large Sized Business”

Avinash Kaushik’s blog “Occam’s Razor” explains KPIs for business owners.

Avinash Kaushik is influential in the adaptation and understanding of web analytics. This blog post from Kaushik’s blog, Occam’s Razor, defines key performance indicators for various business sizes, and explains why they should be important to the business owner.

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“The 6 Web Analytics All Small Business Owners Need To Know”

Pam Lawhorne discusses the 6 most basic analytics elements.

Written by Pam Lawhorne for The Social Marketing Mavens, a marketing firm, this informative post expounds on the six most basic analytics elements a business owner should understand. It’s a brass-tacks look at analytics, and written for the novice.

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“Five Ways Small Business Can Benefit from Web Analytics”

Roguevisions gives five ways small businesses benefit from web analytics.

Roguevisions, a design and marketing firm, dissects five key takeaways from nearly any web analytics tool. The post also describes some less-discussed elements in analytics, such as looking at failures as well as successes.

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“Web Analytics Tips for Beginners”

Howard Huang gives a web analytics overview for beginners.

Howard Huang with Supermedia, a consulting firm, provides an overview of the web analytics process for the beginner — from installation, to terminology, to the analysis itself. If you’re unfamiliar with web analytics in general, this post is a good place to start.

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“Video Introduction to the Power of Web Analytics”

Web analytics data can result in a lower customer acquisition cost.

The crux of this article on Small Biz Technology, a news site, is a video featuring Alex Chang, the founder of Roost, the social media platform now owned by Vertical Response, the email firm. Chang explains how a small business can take collected web analytics data and turn it into more sales and a lower cost of customer acquisition.

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“Why Web Analytics are Important for Your Business”

Analytics can be used to plan and adjust web advertising spending

Jeremy Beynon is an online marketing consultant. In this post, he explores web analytics for the typical small business, with a special focus on risk mitigation through the understanding of data. Beynon touches on how analytics can be used to plan and adjust web-advertising spending.

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“The Benefits of Google Universal Analytics for your Small Business”

Google Universal Analytics combines offline and online data.

This post on Trendslide, a mobile analytics dashboard, addresses Google Universal Web Analytics. This new breed of analytics allow you to import offline data — point of sale volume, call center data — into Google Analytics. From there, the study of your website’s impact on your overall business (and vice versa) can be measured and studied.

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“Applying Basic Web Analytics Principles to Law Firm Websites”

Analytics can be utilized by many types of businesses, including law firms.

While written with the law firm in mind, this post by Steve Henning — with Siteimprove, a usability and testing firm — shares thoughts on applying web analytics to a specific industry. Henning starts with an important question: Why does the website exist? From there, he takes the reader on the path to understanding if that goal is being met.

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“Holiday 2011 Retail Web Analytics on Not Provided”

Laura Thieme examines web analytic suppression using 2011 holiday data.

Laura Thieme with Bizwatch, a marketing firm, describes missing keyword data on natural Google searches for searchers logged into their Google accounts. What that means to the business owner is that a complete picture of your search engine optimization efforts isn’t being accurately described in your web analytics tools.

Thieme discusses the impact of that on retailers by studying data from the 2011 holiday shopping season.

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“Merchandising Variables: Understanding a Retail Fundamental”

David Yoakum provides an advanced blog post with points important to beginners.

David Yoakum of Adobe writes more of an advanced blog post here on attributing revenue to specific actions on a website. But even without using specific analytics software or advanced tracking, his points are important to consider.

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“Why Retailers Should Use Goals in Google Analytics”

Tim Leighton-Boyce explains the importance of micro-conversions.

Tim Leighton-Boyce with CX Focus, an analytics-consulting firm, provides an excellent framework for understanding micro-conversions, the events that need to happen on the path to purchase — or, a lead generation form as the case may be. He describes what some of those conversions might look like for an ecommerce business. But with some tweaking, they can be applied to any business model.