With the 2009 holiday season past us, I’m sure many of you have noticed a slight decrease in the amount of visitors to your site, that is if your organization is based on a business to business model. This phenomenon is quite normal, and expected, as many of the companies you deal with either shut down for the holidays, or have a skeleton staff working within this time period. So naturally, there will be less visitors to your site. Companies that are focused more on the consumer, will see a reverse trend, as holiday shoppers will flock to their site for either product information or to shop online.

So when analyzing your seasonal data, you’ll have to compare the statistics with a previous holiday season in order to gain a better understanding if the number of visitors to your site have increased.  If you’re using Google Analytics, you’re in luck because there’s an easy way to compare the two metrics. In your analytics dashboard, you’ll find a date range selector (Blue) which will allow you to select a range which your website statistics will be based upon. If you check the “Compare to Past” box, you’ll  be able to select a secondary comparison metric (Green), and compare both of these metrics at the same time.

By default, Google will show the amount of visitors for the past month, so you’ll want to select a different date range (ie; 01-12-2009 to 31-12-2009), and then a past date range (ie; 01-12-2008 to 31-12-2008). Now you’ll be able to see and analyze the statistics from the different holiday seasons.