We live in an age of data, and having good data is key to success in marketing. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools out there to help gather it. When you’re trying to understand what happens with your website or mobile app, Google Analytics is one of the best that you can have. Oh, and it’s free!
Google Analytics is a tool that can keep you informed about visits to your site or app – called a “property.” At the most basic level, it tells you how many people use the property.
But it’s far deeper than that. It can help you analyze how they behave and understand what is not working (or working well). Used correctly, it can help you understand user behavior. From that, you can track progress. But you can also troubleshoot issues.
The most basic data you’ll see is the number of users and sessions, the time spent on-site, and the bounce rate. “Users” talks about unique people, while “sessions” includes repeat visitors. The time spent is pretty straightforward. Bounce rate is a percentage based on how many people leave the site without taking any action (such as sending a form, clicking a link, etc). Bounce rate can mean different things depending on the type of site you have. But generally, a lower bounce rate is better since it means more people are exploring the site.
But that’s only the most basic level, and you should learn more about Google Analytics to take full advantage of it. The amount of data available is insane, and you’ll never use every single feature available. However, your unique situation will dictate how you can best use it.
Samples Of What Google Analytics Can Do For You
For instance, if you’re a local business, you’ll be interested in the ability to see where your visitors come from. You can look at statistics based on country, region, and city. Are you attracting the right audience?
You can also see how your social media, SEO, email, or paid ad campaigns are doing. All you need to do is look at the channels by which people arrive at your property. You’ll see separate numbers for each. From there, you can even get more detailed and see what platform they came from. Are visitors that start from Google search spending a lot of time on your property, but those who get there from Facebook aren’t? Do email users click to visit your site only to leave without requesting a quote? All that information is waiting for you.
What happens if you have a lot of site visitors but not a lot of conversions? It could be a problem with the structure or content of your site. Using Analytics, you can see where people leave your site. Did they get to your contact page but not fill out the form? Maybe the form isn’t working. Did they drop off at the price list? It could be they’re shopping around, or that they think they can do better elsewhere. Perhaps there was a technical issue and the page isn’t loading correctly.
You can even add conversion values and track your earnings. The e-commerce options let you take all kinds of factors into account, analyze who is making purchases, and see where opportunities are.
These are just a few examples based on common situations. It’s far from an inclusive list, and there are so many ways to combine data as well. Want to know how many visitors come from Facebook and connected from Cincinnati? You can do that, and see how much time they spent and how many pages they visited.
Get Started Soon
No data answers all your questions, of course. You have to look at it and make judgments. However, it can point you in the right direction and help you discover opportunities and obstacles. And Google Analytics is great for that.
You can sign up for Analytics with a Google account you already own. You can also use it to track multiple properties – up to 100! So if you work with multiple apps and sites, you only need one Google account to track them all. Of course, all the data is separate!
We recommend signing up as soon as possible. No, the offer isn’t going away. However, your data is only available from the time you sign up and connect it to your site.
Google Analytics is an indispensable tool when you want to know how well your site or app is working. Be sure to connect to it as soon as possible so you can have a real sense of what’s going on!
Need help setting up Google Analytics? We’d be glad to lend a hand! It’s not complicated but it may require a small addition to your site’s code.