[peter_d]

Seth Godin on Google Analytics:

Given our desire to be popular combined with Google's desire to give users what they want, it's not surprising that traffic is the key driver of the program.

But traffic is a red herring. At best, it's distracting, a stand-in for something more useful. At worst, though, it's dangerous, because the quest for traffic causes you to make bad decisions.

Why do you have a site? What's your goal? Is it to sell something? To receive email? To spread an idea? Whatever it is, you can probably measure it. And measure it you should. Every other piece of Analytics data is trivial compared to that one number.

Short version: if you don't understand how to do goal tracking and funnel analysis, don't use Analytics until you do.