When we talk analytics, we are referring to Google Analytics. There are other options, but Google Analytics is free and helpful.

To the uneducated eye, Google Analytics is intimidating. Many of the terms are confusing at first sight and it's true, Google Analytics takes a few minutes to learn & a lifetime to master.

With a little bit of learning, you can use the data to improve the bottom line of your business.

Reasons You Need To Start Using Google Analytics

Free: We all like free right? All it takes is a Gmail account and a small piece of code to inserted into your website and you're good to go.

Understand Your Sources Of Traffic: If you're getting leads, email subscribers, phone calls and/or sales, you want to know what's working, right?

You can break down traffic sources to see what websites have sent you traffic.

Did they come via a paid advertisement, Google or social media?  

You can go even further, which social media, the exact Tweet, and which website. Figure out what's successful and keep doing more of that.

Goal Tracking: When you start a campaign, you can create a custom goal in Google Analytics. There's no point in setting a goal and not knowing how successful the goal is. You can:

• tracking visitors to a specific page
• see how long visitors stay on the page
• where do they click after arriving on your site etc.

When you see how your customers are behaving you know if anything needs improving.

Bounce Rates: A 'bounce' is "the percentage of single-page sessions" (read more ). A high bounce rate is usually not a good sign and could be because::

• Visitors aren't finding what they were looking for
• They aren't supposed to land on your page
• Your traffic sources are poor quality
• Your keywords aren't optimized for the content you offer

Gather Information On Your Visitors: You know who your customer is right?

Google knows a lot of information about everyone letting you know if you're attracting the people you expect.

They provide information such as:

• locations
• mobile or desktop
• age
• gender
• interests

You can then delve into different statistics for each of these pages. You might end up with a new idea on how to market your products.

You Can Review Historical Data: You've busy as it is. If you do one thing today, insert the Google Analytics code on your website.

You might not dive into any of the above for the next year, but when you do, you have a whole year's worth of data to analyze. That's pretty awesome right?

Get Google Analytics Today  

Google is a massive company and they offer several products to help web users. Google Analytics is one of the most popular and useful tools in their suite.

Filed in // Web Analytics, Digital Analytics Reporting