Having data from the web is one thing. Knowing what to do with that data? That’s quite another thing all together. On the one hand, the market for analytics software to help your company interpret all the points you’ve collected is growing by leaps and bounds. That means choices and benefits, as well as pitfalls.

To understand what you want your web analytics to do, you first need to figure out your return on investment as well as create a plan for the near future and farther down the road, too. You have to figure out the various stages and the various metrics for your app, and also decide who is going to be involved in capturing and using the data.

It’s complicated, and there are lots of moving pieces. This graph can help sort them out.