Google Analytics - What It's All About

Congratulations, you’ve launched your website!

Now that all the legwork is done and the website is functioning, you can sit back and assume the site is working for you, right?

Well, not exactly. You’re halfway there.

At this stage, the intuitive client will look to adjust website content – and perhaps even product offering – based on the evaluation of website metrics. Website metrics is the measurement of traffic patterns within a specific site.

One of the most comprehensive ways to measure website metrics is to install an easy-to-use program called Google Analytics (GA). This is a task we routinely perform for our clients.

Google Analytics is a tool that enables website administrators to track traffic as visitors enter, view, and exit a specific site. This tool allows site owners to assess the best referral sources (search engines, display advertising, referring URLS, e-mail marketing, even links within PDFs). In addition, GA tracks keywords used, page visitation (number of pages per visit, most popular page, pages most often visited, duration on each page), geolocations of visitors (by countries), browser used, connection speed and more.

Once these reports are distilled and traffic patterns are evaluated, site owners can see what improvements may be made to enhance visitor retention.

If this seems like a lot of information, it is; but not all of the data will have relevance to your marketing. One of our clients had no interest in learning that several visitors were based in Canada and Sweden. The clients were, however, intrigued by the keywords that visitors had used to find specific details on the products. That tidbit helped them adjust their online product mix to address a new market.

There’s a great deal of information that can be gleaned from website analytics. The examination of website traffic patterns help marketers determine what visitors find most important, and adjustments in products and services can be made based on that data.

In everyday life, marketers don’t have the unique opportunity to peak over the shoulder of web-browsing customers. But using Google Analytics, they do.