It’s not just that it’s free, easy to customize, and visually bombastic (the graphs are sort of like…data-centric rainbows).
Google Analytics is a great resource because it gives you detailed insight into who visits your website, how they get there and what they do once they arrive. But to reap the full benefit, you’ve got to know what to do with the information once you’ve got it.
What It Looks Like: Chocolate As Example
Say your website sells chocolates nationwide. You’re interested in the following data:
To see who is visiting your site, Google Analytics generates an interactive map with continents, countries, states, and cities shaded according to how many visitors hail from each location. Where are you visitors coming from? Where are the areas of opportunity?
Next determine how they got there. Just knowing people arrived at your site isn’t enough. Google Analytics tracks all of your incoming traffic sources, whether it’s Direct, Organic Search, Paid Search or Referral traffic. Again: Where are your visitors coming from? Where are the areas of opportunity?
Finally, you’ll want to know what your visitors do once they arrive, are they buying, registering or submitting for more information? You can measure this by setting conversion goals. These are the things you want visitors to do once they arrive, certain pages you want them to visit, actions you want them to take. What are you visitors doing? Where are the areas of opportunity?
Putting Your Data To Work
The data is good to have, but it’s called Google Analytics, not Google Data, for a reason. Once you’ve captured data about your visitors, you need to learn how to analyze it if you want to use it to improve your website.
The Bottom Line
Be active! Don’t watch your site’s performance ebb and flow like something you can’t control. Use the information from Google Analytics to learn your strengths and weaknesses, to ultimately make your site better and evolve faster.
