What is Google Analytics, and why do you need it
Google explains it as a way to understand your customers better.
Google gives you free tools to analyse data for your business in one place.
It is 100% free forever!
With Google Analytics, you can see:
- The number of visits to your website
- How long do people spend on your website
- Where they came from to your website
- The pages they visited
- Search terms used
- The devices they used
- And so much more
Simple to set up – Google Analytics will guide you through the setup process, or you can get your website professional to do it for you.
The data within Google Analytics is categorised into Acquisition, Behaviour and Conversions. Below I will briefly explain these and let you deep-dive into your Google Analytics results.
Acquisition
This is where your traffic comes from or how people arrive on your website. If you look at nothing else within Google Analytics, this will provide you will the most valid information for your business. Knowing where your traffic is coming from lets you know how well you perform online.
- Organic – This is the traffic that comes via your organic position in the Google search results
- Direct – Someone has entered your domain rather than searching
- Social Media – Facebook, Instagram etc.
- Paid Ads – Google Ads, paid search results via CPC
- Referrals – Sites that link to your website and some of the spam results that all websites will receive.
As part of this section, you also see the bounce rate and conversion results when you set goals—simple goals like going to your contact page or more defined goals like purchasing on an eCommerce store.
Behaviour
If you are curious about what people are doing on your website, this is your report.
Page views – Total pages viewed.
Unique page views – Number of people who viewed a specific page at least once during a visit
Average time on page – Time that people viewed your pages
Bounce rate – Single-page visits
Per cent exit – user percentage who exit from a page or set of pages
Behaviour flow is fascinating as this shows the path that visitors commonly take through your website. The page that people enter travel to and then ultimately exit from.
Conversions
Every website owner wants to see their conversion rate, which is people arriving at your website and taking a particular action. Perhaps to subscribe, contact you, buy something, download an ebook etc.
Many types of goals and values to these goals can be set up and monitored within Google Analytics.
Using the Google Analytics reports
Realtime – You can see who is on your website right now in real-time.
Audience – This will break down your traffics, personal location, device and more.
Acquisition – The most useful report to see where your traffic is coming from.
Behaviour – What people did when they were on your website.
Conversions – When you set up goals, you can see the results of these goals.
Analysis paralysis
Yes, this is a real thing – you can become so glued to the data that you forget about running your business. Google Analytics is a great tool but don’t get yourself bogged down in the data. It won’t provide solutions to any business issues you may be trying to solve, but it can show you results.
Once you have these results, you can work on solutions.
Spam
There may be spam within your results, and for the most part, you can ignore it. If it overtakes your website results, more significant issues may need to be resolved.
If you need help with your Google Analytics, Social Media or Google Advertising, contact Kelly @ My Sassy Business.
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