Web masters have long used analytic reports from web logs to help them understand how visitors interact with their site. Knowing where visitors are coming from, where they're going, and what content they're most interested in helps a web site manager make optimizations to create a more streamlined experience.

Wiki and intranet managers can get the same benefit from access reports. Whether you use the reports built into your wiki or integrate Google Analytics, this data can be used to regularly optimize and improve the experience of both your visitors and contributors.

Here are some tips for getting the most value from your web analytics.

Where are they coming from?

Analytics will tell you where your visitors are coming from. If your site is public, it may be linked to from a wide array of web sites. If it's internal, you may learn of some new internal resources that are referencing the site. In either case, this information can be put to good use.

The long tail of this data can provide ideas for fostering greater integration with outside resources to help visitors find and access the site where they're actually looking for it. The way you think visitors are coming to your site may either be validated or corrected.

Where are they going?

Determining the most popular content on your site can help you move that content to the top so that visitors can find it quickly. Perhaps you didn't realize that 30% of visitors are going to that buried page with the vacation policy on it. Providing a top 10 pages list on your site's home page helps the most people find what they're looking for. Use EditMe's Page Counter to generate this list automatically.

What are they looking for?

Keeping track of what users search for is one of the most useful aspects of access logs. Do these searches yourself and review the results. Are folks finding what they're searching for? You can use this feedback to optimize your pages so that the right pages will be found for the most popular searches.

What are they not finding?

Access reports usually include a "404" report. This is a list of requested pages that were not found. If outside sources link into your site, there may be some broken links to pages that have since been refactored, renamed or deleted. Use this information to create pages with these addresses that direct a user (using content or a redirect) to what they were looking for.

What is getting ignored, and why?

What pages on your site haven't been looked at in ages? Perhaps the content is buried too deeply, or perhaps its irrelevant. This is a nice tool to help in spring cleaning and gardening efforts.

What have you learned from your access reports that has helped you improve the efficiency and quality of experience for your visitors and contributors?