Google Analytics is a comprehensive web based tool from Google used for collection, analysis and depiction of traffic data for your website. Based on the analysis of the data, you will be able to draw critical and smart decisions on your current marketing, advertisements and even sales strategies. Using Google analytics, you can find out the percentages of direct incoming traffic, search engine traffic, referrals and even keywords that were used to ultimately reach your website! Amazing isn't it?
Google Analytics is a tool that you need if you wish to survive in this age of Internet marketing. If you know how to use Google Analytics, you can attract more traffic in your site than your competitors’ and eventually can turn them into your loyal customers.
The advantages presented by Google Analytics are
- Fast and easy to use and free
- Most efficient methods of analysis
- Appropriate for all sites
- Tracks the effectiveness of your Internet marketing Campaign
- Completely safe
- Completely FREE too!
How to use Google Analytics is important for you to know because it has hoards of undeniable features like fast and easy implementation where you can simply copy and paste Google Analytics tracking code in your websites to get started immediately. Installing Google Analytics takes about 15 minutes. Follow these simple steps in creating an account at the Google analytics website:
- Go to the Google Analytics Signup page.
- Put the URL you wish to analyze.
- Name it suitably if you have many such URLs to be tracked.
- Select either the country of your site or the country your site is serving.
- Select the time zone accordingly.
- After giving your contact information and acceptance of terms, your account will be created.
Once the account is created, you will receive a snippet of JavaScript code from Google Analytics, which has to be inserted in your web site. Insert Google Analytics JavaScript in every page you wish to track. This insertion is to be done in the HTML level of your page. With this code, however, you can only get information about your own site and not from other sites, unless you have the access permission.
Look for the tag at the very bottom of the codes, just above the page. Locate the code like urchinTracker(), utmLinker(), utmSetTrans(), or utmLinkPost() provided by Google Analytics and paste these JavaScript just above that code or exactly above the tag. If you are using a CMS like Joomla or Wordpress, which is template based, then you may just open the existing template and paste the JavaScript there as well. Now, the moment you upload your pages they start tracking the usage patterns.
To use Google Analytics to its fullest extent, knowing its features is extremely important. For this follow these steps to get an overview of the application:
- Enter Google Analytics and find the section Website Profiles
- Get the reports and visual representation of the traffic data over any time span you select
- You can compare the performance for two time spans from this setup as well.
- Find the option of Visits to change the graph to page views that says the number of times your pages were visited and many such relevant data.
- With the unique feature of Google Analytics, you can set up to 4 goals for any profile, with its specific funnel path.
- With this goal setting you immediately know whether the desired conversion has taken place or not. This is done with a confirmation or ‘Thank You’ page.
- Google Analytics also lets you put 10 URLs that can be included in the funnel to show where along the usage the user abandoned the goal so that you can modify the section suitably
Other useful options for you to explore are
- Site Usage
- Google Analytics Dashboard
- Bounce Rate
- New Visits
- Map Overlay
- Traffic Sources Overview
- Goal performance - A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or a download. You may see it as an end result of a desired process like a sale or download
- Goal conversion rate
- Funnel visualization - A funnel is the series of clicks to pages which ultimately lead the visitor to a goal. You can visualize a funnel as a means to achieve an end.
- Referring sites and many more...
The more you explore the more features come up that enhances the usability of Google Analytics everyday. If you know how to use Google Analytics you can modify your site and it’s content to attract more visitors and clients to enhance the effectiveness of your Internet marketing campaign.
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