Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics & reports about the visits to your website. It is the most widely used website statistics service. While the product is aimed chiefly at marketers as opposed to webmasters, having this service implemented into your website can provide you with incredibly valuable insights that you would have never have had access to previously.
A Little History
Most website owners are familiar with the concept of hit counters to track the number of people visiting their website. Early on these programs would merely tell you how many people came to your website but every year they have gotten progressively more sophisticated. Many webmasters are familiar with such programs as Awstats and Webalizer which were the top free contenders in this space and then there were higher-end offerings from companies like Urchin, which provided greater insights into your website traffic. In 2005 Google acquired Urchin and over the years this developed into its own technology, now named Google Analytics.
New Information You’ll Gain Access To
Google Analytics offers a very robust set of tools to help you understand what is really going on with your website. It would be difficult to cover all it can do in a single blog post and so what I hope to do here is to introduce you to the concept of Google Analytics and why it might be useful for your business. Let’s look at a few good reasons to use Google Analytics:
Executives can:
- Understand which marketing initiatives are most effective
- View accurate website traffic patterns & trends
- See a top down view of where all their website traffic is coming from
- Determine which customer segments are most valuable
- Make intelligent decisions backed by hard data, about strategic initiatives
- Learn which geographical areas are most productive
- Develop website tactics which improve conversions
Marketing People can:
- Learn where visitors come from and what they typed in to get there
- Understand what visitors do once they arrive to the website
- Learn how the website can convert more visitors into customers
- See which keywords resonate with prospects and lead to conversions
- Know which online ad or creative is the most effective (A/B Testing)
- Figure out how to develop not only more leads but higher quality leads
- Track how many visitors completed a certain action (purchase, lead inquiry, call, etc)
Content Writers & Web Developers can learn:
- Which pages retain visitors the longest
- What types of content & topics should be written about more
- Where people leave the site (exactly which page)
- What search terms people use to find the site
- How to improve landing pages
- How to get people to stay on your website longer
We are only scraping the surface here with how Analytics can be used and why it should be used but as you can see it can answer a lot of questions which will help you build a better website, improve your online marketing and take things to a whole new level. Armed with this info, you could double or triple your website’s effectiveness.
Greater Insights = Greater Control
I won’t kid you, this tool is far more elaborate than a simple hit counter. On the surface, yes, you can still see the simple website “visits” and “hits” data but as you can see from above, Google has baked in a lot of complex ways to slice and dice the data, providing insights never before achievable. These insights take the guesswork out of running an effective website and online Marketing campaign.
Do you have Google Analytics installed? Are you monitoring your traffic and improving outcomes? We’re seeing more and more companies aggressively using these tools to squeeze out better results, lower their marketing costs and drive more business.
I highly recommend you get Google Analytics installed and start tracking and analyzing your traffic so you can achieve better outcomes for your company. Don’t have time? We can get it installed for you, analyze the results and make detailed recommendations which will drastically improve your website results.
Call us at 727-562-5161 & Press 1 to speak to a representative or email us.
To your success!