It’s easy to see why literally millions of website managers make use of Google Analytics and it is without doubt the most popular analytics solution there is out there.
Not only is it a free tool which gets you a view of several pieces of data, graphs and stats about traffic to your website all at once, you can also dig a little deeper to make use of the advanced features and discover what’s working for your website and what isn’t.
It’s a great way to measure the success of your different marketing campaigns and understand which ones got the traffic and ultimately the conversions.
So you have the traffic to your website, how do you ensure the conversions happen? (Meaning that, as well as visiting the site, the visitor carries out an action, such as subscribing to the blog or signing up for an email newsletter). In Google Analytics this is referred to as a goal and it is something which you are able to track.
Also, when you want to view and compare data from several websites at the same time in Google Analytics, you can do so by using tools such as Cyfe.
You can discover where in the world the biggest percentages of the traffic to your website is based, how long they stayed on your site for and what they did, so that you can know where and how you should focus your advertising and marketing campaigns in the future. You can find this information under the Visitors and then Location menu.
It’s common practice in marketing to discover what keywords people are putting into the search engines to bring them to your site, but, with Google Analytics, you can see what terms they are searching for once they’re on your site, via the Site Search option.
As well as giving you more of an idea of what people are looking for, it will allow you to provide more information on that topic, or amend your website to ensure that they can find the information they need easier.
Another useful tool within Google Analytics, offers you the chance to see what parts of your website are getting the most interest (or the most clicks).
In the Content menu under In-Page Analytics you can find this information and discover which parts of your website are the most successful. It’s useful to know for ensuring more conversions, but also if a certain part of the website is where the most traffic goes, this is where you will look to place the things that you want to be seen by the most people.
In a similar vein, you can also discover how long they stayed on certain parts of the website and where has the lowest bounce rate – such as if a particular blog post grabbed their attention, it will give you an idea of the kind of subjects to focus on more in the future.
In the opposite way, you can also discover which pages people exit the site on most and whether it’s because they couldn’t find the information they were looking for, the page was difficult to use, or it just didn’t hold their interest.
It is easy to add onto your site and if you need help doing this then please do let us know!
