Did you know the average website purchase in today’s ecommerce world takes place over 34 hours from the consumer’s first visit to a website? If you’re relying on analytics measures such as Google Analytics alone to track your conversions, you’re missing important data — data that you need to make smart decisions about your marketing strategies.

Developing and executing a marketing plan is only part of your job when it comes to marketing your business. If you want real success you’ve got to be able to analyze your results. You need to know how many customers were exposed to your message and what percent converted. If the average consumer is taking over 34 hours to convert that means, unless you’re using cookies, you may not know where a lot of your conversions are coming from and that means you may not know which of your marketing tactics are working.

How can cookies help? Cookies are persistent files your website can place on visitors’ computers. You can use a cookie to see if the person has been to your site before. If they have, and they make a purchase, you’ll know how they found your site originally by reading their cookie. If they have never been to your site you can set a cookie to indicate the way they found your site. That way if they come back to buy in a few days you’ll know where they really came from.

Setting up a cookie tracking script requires some level of technical sophistication so if you’re not experienced with programming you may have to hire a pro to set this up for you. Be sure that once the cookies are implemented you’ll be able to access the data they’re collecting for you about your conversions.