“In God we trust. All others must bring data.” — W. Edwards Deming, Statistician, Professor, Author, Lecturer, and Consultant.
Collecting data and further analyzing it has become a crucial or should I say inevitable element in today’s business world. It is nothing but performance measurement which is done for every aspect of business.
Google Analytics is a web-based service, which allows you to collect data about your website visitors and much more. It allows you to collect and analyse information about everything from how the user arrived at your website, what did they do while on your website, whether or not they bought something, as well as offering lots of additional information around the user demographics.
Simply put, Google Analytics helps you measure your website’s performance based on different KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and in turn allows you to make informed decisions.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” – Peter Drucker
Here are few important benefits of Google Analytics:
Track the Traffic
Visitors to your website may come from various places — a search engine, an advertisement, an email link, etc. Knowing the main sources of your traffic gives you insights about your website’s searchability, your ad campaigns and other incoming links. If, for example, you are running an ad campaign, you can track how much traffic has been generated through these ads, as well as other specifics such as keyword usage and peak time of the day, all of which can be analysed for optimization purposes.
Know what visitors are searching for to find your website — Identify the Keywords
If your website consists of several pages and multiple products/services, you will certainly want to know what users are searching and what terms they are using. By having accurate information on what your visitors are searching to find your site, you will be in a position to add more targeted content and useful information to improve the user engagement or sell your products.
One of the most important reports in Google Analytics is the keywords report. Keywords are vital to figuring out how your search traffic is finding your site. It is possible to see what words / terms, used in searches, have resulted in the most traffic. This info can be used to modify the content on the site for SEO purposes and can help you decide as to which keywords you should be targeting for ad campaigns.
Identify your Audience
Knowing the profiles and behaviours of visitors to your website is extremely useful. With Google Analytics you can find out geographically where the traffic is coming from, age and gender information, and visitor behaviours such as what devices they are using (desktop, mobile, tablet etc.) and whether they are new or returning visitors. This data can help you adapt your website and shape your marketing activity to best meet the needs of your visitors.
Page Popularity & Bounce Rate
Google Analytics allows you to track average time spent on pages and bounce rates, giving you insight to which parts of the site are most popular and where there are bottlenecks. A high bounce rate (when a user leaves your website after visiting just one page) indicates that the visitors are not finding the information they want or are struggling to navigate through the site (this differs for a single page site though.). Understanding as to where this is happening allows you to modify the content and structure the site to help reduce these rates and therefore increase engagement.
Setting Goals & Monitoring
Google Analytics allows you to create specific goals depending on your business requirements. You can either choose to create your own custom goals. An example of these types of goals would be tracking ebook downloads or trial sign-ups. Or you can choose from a template revenue, engagement, acquisition, or inquiry. Using the tool, you can monitor how these goals are performing and then take the necessary action to complete the goals based on this feedback.
It’s Free
Google Analytics is completely free of charge and offers just as many, if not even more, functionalities than most of the other paid tools in market.
Concluding Lines
Google Analytics is a great tool for increasing the effectiveness of your online presence, no matter what the size or nature of your business is.
I’m Supriya Agnihotri Jagani, Founder at Propeller.in. Outlined above are just some of the main things that you can do with Google Analytics. There are many other features, including social and email reporting, sub domain management and revenue tracking, that Google Analytics offers, making it a seriously powerful marketing tool that should not be overlooked. We at Propeller Themes have not overlooked it either. All our themes are Google Analytics compatible and allows a seamless integration of the tracking code and more.
Are you new to Google Analytics? Team Propeller can assist you with the initial setup of Google Analytics, as part of our theme support offering. Do get in touch if you would like to find out more.
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