The holiday shopping season is fast approaching. Experts are still speculating as to whether online spending will rise or fall, but one thing is certain: the trend toward consumers turning to online channels for holiday gift ideas will continue.

To make the most of your online marketing this year, it’s important to understand how traffic is getting to your website; a good way to figure this out is through a web analytics platform. If you do this well, you just may be able to snag a larger piece of the holiday shopping pie, or to more effectively reach a niche audience.

Making proper use of web analytics programs is similar to planning a holiday party. For a successful party, you need take care of the logistics (location, time, place), ask for RSVPs and use the information you have to throw the best possible party. Implementing and monitoring web analytics tracking is really no different:

• Logistics: In party planning and in web analytics, first things come first: you need to lay the foundation for success. For your party, your foundation is the ideal location, place, and time. For web analytics, your foundation is your tracking code: You’ll need to make sure you’ve properly installed your web analytics system. Most programs require that you implement a piece of code on all pages you wish to track. If nothing else, make sure you’ve tagged your holiday-specific web pages.

Once you’ve laid the foundation, you’ll need to specify your goals and the steps necessary to meet those goals. With regard to your party, for example, you likely want your guests to have a fantastic experience. For this to happen, many details need to fall into place: You’ll need a great list of guests, you’ll want your guests to arrive in time to mingle before dining, and you’ll need to organize the quantity of available food and drinks so that everyone leaves feeling satisfied.

Similarly, you’ll need to set goals for your online traffic — which will likely relate to sales conversions. If you want to sell a certain product or promotion, you’ll have to make sure consumers reach you via relevant online searches, land on specific webpages and visit conversion pages. (Another reminder: make sure your shopping cart works!) Before the holiday rush, specify your goals and funnels via your web analytics platform so you can adapt to trends throughout the season.

• RSVPs: Just as you ask your guests to let you know if they are attending your fabulous party, you can ask your web analytics platform to let you know about interesting traffic trends. Once you’ve set your code and tracking goals, you can set up proactive alerts to monitor spikes in traffic. With Google Analytics, for example, you can set Intelligence Alerts to proactively monitor important holiday shopping events: spikes in holiday-related keyword traffic, an influx in traffic from a certain source, an increase in traffic from new visitors, or a change in traffic to your holiday shopping online advertising campaigns.

• Party optimization: Keeping track of the RSVP list will allow you to make party-planning decisions (such as how much food to purchase). Similarly, you can rely on your analytics alerts, goals, and funnels to make important business decisions this holiday season.

If you receive an alert regarding a spike in holiday-related keyword traffic, for example, you can dig into this data to identify traffic trends. First, you’ll want to make sure you are running ads on these high traffic terms. From there, you can run advanced segment reports to gain insight into people searching on these terms: Are these return visitors or new visitors? If, for example, you find these are new visitors, you can specifically target these users to ensure they are converting at higher rates. You might consider running a special promotion for new visitors to your site, mentioning this promotion in your ad text, and linking these visitors to a landing page that specifically references this discount.

This holiday season, the best parties will be those that have laid a solid foundation and adapted to the needs of the guests. Similarly, the best online marketers will be those of you who have made the most of their web analytics data. Here’s to a safe, fun, and successful holiday season!