See How Your Website Is Faring By Using Google Analytics

Published in Online tools

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As with a physical storefront, it is important to monitor the progress a website makes once it is online. Think about it as an online version of your store. Just the way you go to your store every day, monitor customers, attend to their needs, answer questions and even sell items, your website should be attended to. However, since website is an entity somewhere in the cyberspace, a dimension that lacks touch and feel, it can take a backseat in terms of getting attention.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that helps business owners track practically every aspect of their website. Among many other metrics, Google Analytics furnishes business owners the following important details:
- Number of people are visiting their site
- Geographic location of the users
- The web-pages they visited,
- The time they spent browsing the site
- The device they used to access the website (computer, smartphone, etc.)
- The time of the day when the users accessed the website

This is just some of the information that Google Analytics provides. You can read a more extensive list of features Google Analytics provides below. However, these few important metrics can help a business owner in knowing how their website is faring in the cyberspace.

Why is Google Analytics important?

Just the way you monitor your physical storefront, it is important to monitor your website. After all, it is an online representation of your business. It plays a vital role in making a statement to your existing and prospective customers. So, Google Analytics can help you strategize your business growth plans. For instance, if you see that your visitors are spending a lot of time on a specific web-page, you might want to add promotional info on that page. If you find that your visitors are coming from a specific city, you might want to advertise more there. If Google Analytics tells you that most of your visitors are using a smartphone to access your site, you should check if your website design is mobile-friendly. And so on and so forth. Paying close attention to the analytical data that Google Analytics furnishes can help a business owner formulate their business strategies to the last detail.

What are the different features that Google Analytics provides?

Apart from the features described previously, here is a detailed list of Google Analytics’ prominent features. Do note that Google Analytics is constantly adding new features and we recommend signing into your Google Analytics account regularly to stay abreast of the changes that Google may roll out. The dashboard of Google Analytics allows you to view the location, traffic patterns, customer behavior, as well as performance for your website. Here’s a list of some useful Google Analytics’ features.

  • Mobile Access
  • Get your data any time anywhere. The information store in your mobile app is real time updated so your data is always updated and accurate.
  • Filter out internal traffic
  • You never have to worry about your own personal website visits messing with your data numbers
  • Ecommerce Tracking
  • This allows you to see traffic coming only from your most profitable customers.
  • Goals
  • Google Analytics tracks your goals so as your website progresses you can see how far you’ve come
  • Site Search
  • Allows you to see what specific keywords your visitors are searching for on your site
  • Comparing Date Ranges
  • Compare two different dates to see how your site was performing at two different times. This allows for comparing as well as seeing growth or traffic changes to your website.
  • Geographic Data
  • This allows you to see how your site is growing in a certain geographical area. You can compare different cities and see how the website is performing in one place vs. another.
  • Navigation Summary
  • This will allow you to see how users are transitioning from one place to another on your site. For example, from the homepage the user next goes to the contact us section.
  • Email Reports
  • You can schedule reports to be emailed to other employees however often you would like. This makes it easier for company as every person does not need to have access to logging in and view the Google Analytics dashboard.
  • Referring sites
  • Find out which websites are sending user traffic to your website.
  • Connection Data Speeds
  • If you have a high volume of visitors using a slow internet connection such as dial up, you may want to decrease your download speeds of your website to make it a bit more user friendly.
  • Export to PDF
  • You can export any file or report to a PDF file. This allows for easy printing and saving of your data for whatever you may need it for.
  • Report Finder
  • Don’t stress about trying to find an old report. Using the report finder under help resources will ensure that you are able to find any report you may be looking for.

    Does Google Analytics intrude on the privacy of the visitors accessing my website?

    Google Analytics provides general information pertaining to website visitors. So, it will tell you where the city from where a visitor came from, but not the visitor’s address. It will tell you that the visitor used a smartphone to access your website, but not the visitor’s phone number. Google takes user privacy very seriously and so rest assured that you are not intruding on your visitors’ privacy.

    Is it difficult to set up Google Analytics? How can I access it?

    Google Analytics is easy to set up and free to sign up. All that you need is a Gmail account, which is required to sign up for Google Analytics. Once you sign up for Google Analytics, a code snippet is automatically generated, which can be simply copied and pasted in your website’s code. It takes only a few minutes to set it up. If you have a programmer developing your site, make sure that you let him know that you would like to set up Google Analytics for your site.

    With a list of such powerful abilities, Google Analytics is a must have for all businesses that have a website. After all, there is no point in having a website and not monitoring its progress. Do you think Google Analytics is an important tool? Have you used Google Analytics before? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

    A penny for your thoughts!

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