Google Analytics (1)

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Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics
service offered by Google that tracks and reports
website traffic. 1. Google launched the service
in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin. 2.
Google Analytics is now the most widely used web
analytics service on the Internet. 3. Google
Analytics is offered also in two additional
versions the subscription based Google Analytics
360. 4. Previously Google Analytics Premium,
targeted at enterprise users and Google Analytics
for Mobile Apps, an SDK that allows gathering
usage data from iOS and Android Apps.
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Google Analytics Quick Glossary
Before we begin, there a few terms you should
know. Youll see them often in your Google
Analytics data, and Ill use them throughout this
post. 1. Dimensionsa dimension is a descriptive
attribute or characteristic of an object that can
be given different values. Browser, Exit Page,
Screens and Session Duration are all examples of
dimensions that appear by default in Google
Analytics. 2. MetricsMetrics are individual
elements of a dimension that can be measured as a
sum or a ratio. Screenviews, Pages/Session and
Average Session Duration are examples of metrics
in Google Analytics. 3. SessionsA session is
the period of time a user is actively engaged
with your website, app, etc., within a date
range. All usage data (Screenviews, Events,
Ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a
session. 4. UsersUsers who have had at least
one session within the selected date range.
Includes both new and returning users. 5.
PageviewsPageviews means the total number of
pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are
counted.
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6. Pages/SessionPages/session (Average Page
Depth) is the average number of pages viewed
during a session. Repeated views of a single page
are counted. 7. Avg. Session DurationThe
average length of a session. 8. Bounce
RateBounce rate is the percentage of single-page
visits (i.e., visits in which the person left
your site from the entrance page without
interacting with the page). 9. New SessionsAn
estimate of the percentage of first-time
visits. 10. GoalsGoals let you measure how
often users take or complete specific actions on
your website. 11. ConversionsConversions are
the number of times goals have been completed on
your website. 12. CampaignsCampaigns (also
known as custom campaigns) allow you to add
parameters to any URL from your website to
collect more information about your referral
traffic. 13. AcquisitionAcquisition is how you
acquire users. 14. BehaviorBehavior data helps
you improve your content.
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How To Set Up A Basic Google Analytics Account
1. To set up your own FREE Google Analytics
account you must start by visiting the Google
Analytics website at google.com/analytics 2.
Click on the "Access Analytics" blue button in
the upper right corner of the page. 3. Click on
the "Add a new account" button in the upper right
corner. 4. Find the "Sign Up" button on the lower
left corner. 5. Fill out the information required
on the following page. (site URL, account name,
time zone or territory, and time zone.) Click
"Continue" button when finished. 6. Adding your
last name and first name is optional but the
country or territory is a required field. 7. Read
the Google Analytics Terms of Service, check the
"yes, I agree to TOS" and finish registration by
clicking on "Create New Account". 8. Copy the
JavaScript code given to you on the following
page and click "Save and Finish"
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9. After clicking "Save and Finish" you should be
directed to the account overview for the site you
just set up. Notice how under 'status' there is
an error. This is because we haven't installed
the code you just copied to your website. 10. It
is very important that the Google Analytics
JavaScript code be pasted right before the body
tag (within the code) for every page in your
website. See the image below for an example of a
correct implementation. 11. CONGRATULATIONS! You
have successfully created and implemented a basic
Google Analytics account. Wait a couple days (at
least one) and re-visit your Google accounts to
start seeing your site data.
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5 Tips why we use google analytics to Better
Understand Your Business or Blog

1. How is your audience finding you?
2. Where is your audience located?
3. Which content is getting viewed most often?
4. Goals
5. See who's on your site in Real Time!

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How is your audience finding you?
Have you ever wondered how people are finding
your website or blog? Some of your users are
probably finding your site just through direct
traffic, but knowing exactly how your users are
arriving is powerful information! In many cases,
users are arriving to your site after seeing your
content on another site (social media, another
blog, etc). These websites are called
"referrals." To see which referral sites are
driving the most traffic, follow these steps in
your Analytics account  Acquisition gt All
Referrals  Once you see a list of all of your
referral sites, you'll get a precise list of
websites that your visitors are coming from.
Specifically, how many visits did each site
generate in your given timeframe (you can change
your date range in the upper right hand corner of
your account)? How many pages did those users
visit once they were on your site? If you have
ecommerce data setup, you'll even be able to see
if users placed an order on your site after
visiting the referring site. It's helpful to know
where your visitors are coming from so that you
can either share your content on those specific
sites more frequently, or, target sites that are
similar. Another reason why it's helpful to know
where your visitors are coming from is so that
you can spend time promoting your content in the
right places. For example, perhaps you're posting
10 times a day to Facebook but not getting a ton
of traffic. Whereas, you've pinned a few images
to Pinterest that are driving tons of traffic to
your site. Instead of spending time formatting
and posting content to Facebook, it might be
better spent pinning images to Pinterest.
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Where is your audience located?
Analytics allows you to see where the users who
visit your site are located geographically (it
will give you city/town data, but not their
street address- not to worry!). Why does this
report matter? Perhaps you are getting a huge
number of visitors from Canada, but you don't
offer shipping there. Knowing that you have an
interested set of users in a specific geographic
location might cause you to rethink your product
distribution. Another way this report can be
helpful is for bloggers trying to find the right
time of day to schedule posts. Maybe you live in
California and you've been scheduling your posts
for 8am PST, but after using this analytics
report, you realize that most of your visitors
live on the east coast and respond well to posts
during their commute (430am PST)? Knowing where
your visitors are located can help you reach the
people who are actively seeking your content! In
your analytics account, follow these steps to see
where your visitors are located Audience gt Geo gt
Location
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Which content is getting viewed most often?
One of the things that I've found most
interesting when looking at our analytics is the
content that users spend time viewing. By
clicking Behavior gt Site Content gt All Pages in
your analytics account, you can see which pages
on your site are getting the most views. Perhaps
you're a fashion blogger and every now and then
you do a post on recipes or entertaining. By
checking out this report, you might learn that
the entertaining related posts are getting viewed
more than any others. Having that information
might suggest that you should create more content
in the entertaining vein. If you are an ecommerce
site, perhaps you look at this report in
analytics and realize that your "under 100" page
is getting more views than any other page on your
site, however, you only sell three products that
fit the under 100 criteria. This could be an
opportunity to carry more products in that price
range. In your analytics account, follow these
steps to see which content is getting the most
views Behavior gt Site Content gt All Pages
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Goals
What do you want users to do when they get to
your site? If you have a website of any kind,
there's no question that you desire your visitors
to take some kind of action. Our greatest goal in
terms of analytics is for users to go through the
checkout process and place an order. So, one of
the 'goals' we have set up in analytics is the
moment a user reaches the "Thank Your For Your
Order" confirmation page. Goals don't have to be
ecommerce related, though. You could also create
a goal for when people sign up for your mailing
list, fill out a form on your site, or even reach
a specific page within your site. Here's more
information on how to setup goals for your
analytics account Why do goals matter? The goals
we have in our account tell us how our various
efforts are performing. My favorite report to
look at within goals is the report that shows you
which referral sites are leading to goal
completions. In the graphic above, you'll see
that by clicking Conversions gt Goals gt Overview gt
Source Medium we can see which referral sites are
garnering the most goal completions. Let's say
the goal on your site is for people to sign up
for your newsletter. Let's also pretend that
you've recently received a lot of press and have
been written up on 5 prominent sites. By
following this report in your account, you might
see that 2 of the 5 sites have really high goal
completion rates, while the other 3 sites didn't
convert into goal completions at all. Perhaps
you'll want to reach out to those 2 sites that
converted so well to see how you might
collaborate again.
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See who's on your site in Real Time!
Did you just send out a big email blast or share
a fun post on social media? In analytics, you can
see how users are responding to your content in
real time! Simply click "Real Time" on the left
hand navigation bar to see how many users are
currently on your site, the traffic sources that
referred them, which pages they're viewing, and
more. This is one of my favorite features to take
advantage of when we send out a big promotion or
new product lunch. It allows us to monitor the
success of campaigns and the pages on which users
are spending the most time. Here are a few ways
that the Real Time view in Analytics can help
your site Did Oprah just mention you on Twitter?
In Real Time , you're able to see how that tweet
might be affecting your site traffic and which
pages those new visitors are checking out. Did
you recently roll out some exciting changes to
your site? You can see if users are finding that
new content. Did you recently share a big
announcement or are you launching a promotion?
With Real Time, you can see the traffic that's
coming to your site as a result and which
specific pages your visitors are perusing.
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Benefits of Google Analytics
1.Its completely free 2.Analyse sources of
traffic 3.Breakdown of keywords 4.Information
about visitors 5.Specific page popularity 6.Websit
e bounce rates 7.Traffic flow 8.Review historical
data
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Its completely free
Google Analytics is a completely free tool to use
and is all online with no purchases of
subscriptions necessary. You can use all of the
wide range of tracking statistics and analysis at
no cost. To sign up to Google Analytics youll
need a Gmail account that is also free to create
if you do not have one.
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Analyse sources of traffic
Google Analytics can show you how users are being
driven to your website, for example how many
people have found your website through a link
from another website, via paid advertisements,
from search engines or from a direct link. This
will allow you to see proportionally how
successful various methods of traffic sources
are, such as if your advertisements are
performing well by increasing traffic.
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Breakdown of keywords
Google Analytics can be used to see what keywords
you are being found under in search engines. This
will show you which keywords are performing well,
allowing you to modify your website to assist
with search engine optimisation to try and boost
the traffic generated from certain keywords.
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Information about visitors
Google Analytics provides an excellent breakdown
of information about visitors coming to your
website. You can see the most popular countries
and towns that are accessing your website,
helping you to determine if any localised
marketing campaigns or keyword targeting is
providing desired results. It can also help you
to tailor your content or advertising to any
areas that are generating a significant portion
of traffic.
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Specific page popularity
Google Analytics can provide data about which of
your pages are the most popular, allowing you to
see which areas of your website are being
considered more relevant and higher value
content. Using this information you can improve
these pages to attempt to generate more sales as
well as being able to see the type of content
that is sought after by your visitors that can
help you to shape future content.
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Website bounce rates
This is the amount of users that only view one
page of your website before leaving or bouncing
away again. If your bounce rate is rather high it
is likely that your website is not what the user
was looking for or perhaps they stumbled across
your website by accident. It may also be worth
checking to see if any of your targeted
optimisations such as keywords as they may be
slightly misleading, or the quality of your
traffic sources. The bounce rate is associated
with the relevance and quality of content on your
website, showing visitor satisfaction across your
website. This can also help you to see which
pages are encouraging users to stay on your
website, with the possibility to highlight those
with a high bounce rate that need to be improved
especially if they are landing pages.
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Traffic flow
Google Analytics can display how traffic is
flowing in a visual flow chart. This shows you
where the majority of visitor traffic is entering
the website and from there showing the amount of
people that visit subsequent links as well as
bounce rates as they navigate across your
website. For example if 100 users first start on
your home page, you would easily be able to see
that 10 of them left your website at that point
(your bounce rate), 65 navigated to the
products page while 25 next visited your about
us page. You can then see of those 65 on the
products page how many left the website at that
point, and how many went on to view specific
other pages and so on. There is a lot of useful
information to be drawn from this. For example
you can see what your most popular landing pages
are as well as showing the bounce rates for each
page, allowing you to focus on improving those
pages to increase visitor retention and generate
leads. This also tells you the priority of pages
that users are looking at when navigation your
site, this can allow you to modify your pages to
allow easier navigation across the desired areas
while removing or modifying pages that are rarely
being visited, or with very high drop offs, to be
more desirable.
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Review historical data
Google Analytics can display how traffic has
changed across large periods of time. This can be
very useful to see if there are any tends across
certain time frames. For example, which of your
marketing campaigns have been most successful
helping you to shape your future advertising, or
if certain pages, services or products are
gathering a larger amount of interest at specific
points of the month or year. These are only some
of the things that Google Analytics allows you to
do. There are many other tools that it provides
such as email reports, sub-domain management,
outbound links, mobile statistics, social
reporting and revenue tracking, making it one of
the most powerful marketing and statistics tools
available for increasing the effectiveness of
your online presence especially as its free.
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Advantages of Google Analytics
1.Easy to create Fair warning easy will be
overused from this point forward. Google
Analytics has made the set-up simple. Theres a
number of widgets, charts and layouts to get you
started. 2.Saves time After the initial
set-up, all you will need to do is log in to
Google Analytics, change the timeframe, and voila
your report is ready. No need to spend the
hours gathering the data from each of the
different reports. 3.Easy to share Google
Analytics makes the reports easy to share. There
is the ability to share the dashboard with any
other users that have access to the account, as
well as the functionality to download the reports
to PDFs to share with others in the organization
who may not have access.
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4.Widgets link to reports within Analytics We
all know that dashboards cant answer all the
questions. In fact, sometimes they create a few
more. With Google Analytics custom dashboards,
you are able to link within each widget to the
report the data came from. That way, when you
have an additional question based on the metric
youre looking at, all you need to do is click to
get at the deeper information behind
it. 5.Theres help to get started Google has
also created a solutions gallery to help you get
started creating dashboards. These solutions come
from other Analytics users who have shared their
dashboard set-ups. Its a great resource if
youre not sure where to start. Check out these
ideas from Business 2 Community.
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Disadvantage of Google Analytics
1.Limited customization I called these custom
dashboards, didnt I? Well, thats mostly true.
You have the ability to determine layouts, sizes,
which metrics you want, etc. You dont, however,
have the ability to customize the visuals. You
are limited to predetermined colors, fonts, table
layouts, and charts. There is no matching to
brand here. Unless your brand is Google, that
is. 2.Limited widgets per dashboard As with
anything, there are limitations. Each dashboard
is limited to 12 widgets. Dont fret too much.
You are able to create multiple dashboards, so
youre not limited to only 12 metrics in total.
However, this limitation does make you think
about what is important to include in the
dashboard and what is not. Perhaps it actually is
a positive, as youll eliminate those unnecessary
data points. 3.PDF download only Currently,
the only option to download the dashboard is in
PDF format. If you need to include the dashboards
as part of a presentation to the executive team,
unfortunately you will need to import the PDF
into your presentation and make adjustments for
it to fit properly.
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Conclusion
Analytics has played a big role in the growth of
my business It has helped us create strategies
around our online efforts, and given us insight
into how users are finding and interacting with
our site. I hope this information will be helpful
as you grown your business/blog!