If you’re a business owner, you want to know how your business is doing from a traffic standpoint. It’s vital to know your stats and evaluate and re-evaluate your business plan to see how it works and where to improve for future plans. These are all important things, but there is a danger in viewing your metrics perpetually and over evaluating your stats. Any good diet and fitness expert will even tell you not to weigh yourself everyday. These are several dangers involved with it because a perpetual evaluation of metrics can lead to desperation tactics, loss of focus on the goals, and you get too many irons in the fire to know whether one plan actually worked.

Desperation Tactics

There are several gimmicks to draw traffic to your site. Many of them are not as effective as you would hope, but if your traffic doesn’t appear to be getting to the numbers you would like, these tactics become a regular part of your business plan. The more these desperation tactics are implemented, the farther it takes you out of your original plan, making your stats and your metrics unpredictable and skewed.

Loss of Focus on Goals

Constantly evaluating your metrics can also lead to a loss of focus on your goals. In all likelihood, the metrics that are present on your site are there because of a plan implemented months or weeks prior. It is easy to be discouraged when you don’t see the results you want to see, but giving it a little time to work will help you stay focused on your goal. Daily checking of your metrics can also lead to skewed perceptions of your business plan. A good rule of thumb is to check your metrics once a month or every other week – certainly a better alternative than checking everyday.

Too Many Irons in the Fire

When you have too many irons in the fire, it’s hard to tell where your traffic is coming from and why it’s coming from that source. Pare it down and watch your plan work through the system. Having too many irons in the fire will put more work on your shoulders than not. It also gives you an altered perception of your original metric systems. Keep it simple initially and you can build from there, but “shotgunning” a marketing plan because you don’t like what you see can end with disastrous results.

When it comes to metrics and stats, don’t check it everyday. Be smart about it. You will have a hard time getting focused on your end goals.