Google Analytics is a free tool that is offered by Google that can give you a better understanding and more in-depth knowledge of the traffic flowing to your website.
While your analytics does not wholly define your digital presence, they are a massive part of your digital presence and having a sophisticated awareness can be more beneficial than you may realize.
The Google Analytics tool allows you to track everything from blogs to social networks. In addition to this, it put a ton of predetermined customizable reports at your disposal. Some of the best key features of Google Analytics allow you to monitor elements like:
● Visits – Knowing how many visits you have will enable you to build or maintain strategies to increase your visit count.
● Duration – Some people don’t pay enough attention to visit duration. If the average duration is under 30 seconds, you will need to make some pretty drastic changes.
● Sources – Traffic sources is one of the best things you can monitor. It allows you to get an in-depth understanding of where your visitors are located.
● Visited Pages – Having the ability to track which pages your user’s visit can show you more than just levels of popularity, it can also show you how user-friendly your site is.
Where Google Analytics really shines is with its ability to work in synchronicity and harmony with the complete Google tool catalogue. This means it’s possible to combine Google Analytics with Blogger, AdWords and even YouTube.
How Does Google Analytics Work?
The free Google Analytics tool works by merely collecting data by using a combination of data that is extracted from browsers, cookies and JavaScript code.
To look at how Google Analytics works, it records and collects data of users from the moment they land on your page, until the moment they leave. Google Analytics takes this data and transformed into graphs and statistical data that will allow you to maintain a watchful eye on the evolution of your website.
Key Features Of Google Analytics
While there are many paid analytics platforms out there, when you examine the features of Google Analytics, it is difficult to see why anybody would pay for an analytics platform when Google Analytics free tool is so packed with features. In this section, we are going to look at a few of the best features of Google Analytics.
1) Traffic Reporting
While it may be the most fundamental feature of Google Analytics, it’s often said that the simple things are the ones that should be done best, and Google really does that here. The traffic reporting service will give you an accurate depiction of how many people are visiting your site each day. Over time it will also build trends and put forward analysis for this too.
2) Keyword referrals
If you ever wondered what people were actually searching for when they stumbled across your website, then you need wonder no further. Google Analytics shows you a comprehensive breakdown of the keywords searched for when people were trying to find you. Features like this can really be robust when it comes to SEO.
3) Third-Party Referrals
Having access to a feature like this will always be beneficial. Discovering which other sites are referring you can be remarkably beneficial and can go a long way should you decide to take on third-party marketing into your future strategies.
What Can You Do With Google Analytics?
Another part of the key features of Google Analytics is knowing what precisely you can do with it. To put things in the most basic of terms, Google Analytics can aid in marketing decisions based on the data that’s provided to you.
Google Analytics will show you if you can spend more on advertising and most importantly, where to spend. Not only this, but Google Analytics can also help you come to conclusions when deciding exactly what type of content you need to get out into the world.
When Google Analytics categorizes data, it does so by sorting into the ABCs:
● Acquisition
● Behaviour
● Conversions
In this section, we will now summarise the ABCs briefly to help give a basic understanding of each.
Acquisition
When we talk of acquisition in Google Analytics, we are simply referring to the process of you gaining traffic to your website. When you examine acquisition reports, you will be able to see how people have come to land on your website. Acquisition reports are great for showing you prominence of keywords and how people found you and you will even be able to monitor referrals.
One of the most prominent things you can do with Google Analytics is to combine it with your Ads account and thus you will now have a better insight as to how your successful your campaigns are. Behaviour When you start to monitor behaviour reports, you will get a feel for how people are acting when they land on your site. By using behaviour reports correctly, you can gain some extremely valuable information that can really help you find flaws and even grow. The way people behave when they are on your site tells you so much.
If people are staying for short periods of time, and you can see a pattern evolving, it may be that your website doesn’t have the clarity that people want. If there are behaviour patterns that track whimsical page visits, it could be that the site is challenging to navigate. Having the ability to see patterns like this and manage them quickly can really save a business. The final thing of mention on behaviour reports is that it gives you a greater understanding of your website performance.
You will be able to monitor:
● Page load time;
● Redirection time;
● Domain lookup time;
● Server connection time;
● Server response time;
● Page download time.
Having access to these will give you a better idea of which pages need to be optimized. Conversions The staple for any user of Google Analytics is getting to know precisely how the website is performing, and the best way to determine this is to monitor conversion rates.
While conversion data is primarily for eCommerce and is specific for those that are selling, it’s a great idea to get to grips with how conversion reports work and how they can really help you align new goals for your business.
Why Is Google Analytics Important? When looking at the importance of Google Analytics, the first thing of note is that it makes data readily available and easy to process for anybody that longs for something better from their website. Running a website of any kind nowadays is incredibly challenging, so something as simple as Google Analytics can really offer an all-in-one tool that can help you reach your target audience in more ways.
Google Analytics is also incredibly important for businesses; we all know that marketing is terribly challenging nowadays, so any helping hand will always be welcome. So many companies are turning to Google Analytics not only because it’s free, but it’s also because it helps them determine the success of the campaign as it’s happening. Most advertising campaigns success cannot be analyzed until it’s over and done with, with Google Analytics, this issue is taken off the table.
Overall Google Analytics can not only drive better-qualified leads, but it can also save money. So whether you are a business or running a blog, Google Analytics could be one of the most essential tools you can use.
Conclusion
While Google Analytics may not be the be-all and end-all, it is evident that it’s a useful and handy tool for more or less anybody that runs a website. At its heart, Google Analytics is a problem-solving tool, and in today’s world, it can be a welcome one. Google Analytics is a great tool when you need to find a problem, rather than a solution and can be incredible for the identification process. With a ton of features, a cost of nothing and an easy to use environment, you would be silly not to consider using Google Analytics in unison with your website.