Hidden in the announcer’s box is someone charged with a very special job: Watching each and every pitch thrown, ball hit, and play made, and recording it all in the official scorebook. Each ball and strike, walk and steal, are all duly accounted for in the scorekeeper’s book. Then, after the game, the scorekeeper calculates statistics such as batting average, earned-run average, slugging percentage, and a host of other mind-numbingly-precise details.

Not only do these statistics give the announcers something to talk about during the inevitable lulls in the game (“This batter is 0-for-3 against left-handed pitchers with an “X” in their last name!”), they also provide invaluable information for the coaches and the players themselves. The stats are reviewed and rehashed, posted and celebrated (or moaned) over. Statistics matter in baseball.

They matter in business, too. Knowing that a certain affiliate is bringing in the bulk of your sales, or that a particular product’s appeal has dropped off significantly, or that one sales page is doing twice the business another is, are all valuable bits of information. Sure, you can get lost in the numbers, but there are a few basics online business owners must track on a regular basis:

1. Site visits/page views/unique visitors. How many people come to your site? How many pages do they view? Do they come back?
2. Conversions. When they visit, do they take the action you desire, whether it’s making a purchase or signing up for your mailing list?
3. Total sales and total expenses. How much are you bringing in, and how much are you spending?
4. Referring sites. Who is sending you traffic and why?

If you don’t do business online, the same general topics can be tracked for any businessperson. Instead of site visits, you can track number of people who come into your store or who call your (800) line, and what percentage of those actually order. You can track total sales and expenses, and what brought the visitor into the store (billboard, radio ad, referral from a friend, etc.).

But tracking these statistics isn’t enough, just as knowing that your clean-up batter always walks the first time up in a home game. You have to DO something with that knowledge, and review it again and again over time, looking for patterns and trends. You need to know as much about your business as those color announcers know about the home team.