Traffic
Tips – Three Reasons Why I Love Google Analytics
Author: ©Andrew Grant
If you are not using Google Analytics, I have one question for
you? Why not? For any aspiring webmaster, Google's free traffic
monitoring and analysis service is an awesome tool that has
now become my first port of call every day. Google Analytics
keeps my finger on the pulse of my website, by tracking visitors,
page views, referral sources and conversions all in one single
interface.
OK,
maybe you didn't know it existed. Well you will find it at http://www.google.com/analytics
or if you already have a Google Adwords account, take a look
at the tabs at the top of your screen and you'll see that you
can access Analytics there too. Go take a look and get yourself
a free account.
Setting
it up is pretty easy. There are two bits of code which Analytics
will generate automatically for you. One is the tracker code,
which simply needs to be copied and pasted to the pages of your
website. Some webmasters only put the code on their main pages,
but I'd recommend putting it on every single page – that
way your stats will be much more in depth.
The
other code is for Conversion tracking, which I'll cover in a
minute.
So
now you have it set up, let me tell you the three reason why
I absolutely love Analytics.
Reason
#1 – it's incredibly comprehensive. Analytics will tell
you how many visitors came to your site, how long they stayed,
what pages they looked at, which site they came from, what kind
of browser they had, what country they live in and whether they
have been before.
It
will tell you which keywords, campaigns and ad versions brought
them here. It will tell you how long they stayed on each page,
which page they looked at before and which one they went to
next. It will tell you which page they came in on and which
one they left from. You can look at the site as a whole, or
each individual page and you can analyse whole months or just
a single day.
In
fact, at times there is almost too much data, so I tend to focus
on my key metrics. Number of unique visitors, top pages and
most importantly the traffic source. For example I know exactly
how many visitors are brought in by my pay-per-click campaign
and how many come from my article writing efforts. Now that's
incredibly powerful because article writing costs me nothing,
so if I can increase that then I make more profit.
Reason
#2 – Conversion tracking. The second piece of code that
Analytics will generate is a conversion tracker. This is copied
and pasted to whichever page or pages in your site mean that
you have a made a sale. I use it for my newsletter sign-ups,
by putting the code on the Thank you page.
Any
visitors who make it that far then show up in a separate column
in my Analytics stats and I can cross reference them against
the other factors.
For
example, I know that visitors who find my site in a standard
web search and click on the link, are almost twice as likely
to sign up for the newsletter as those who come from an Adwords
ad. So, you can see why free traffic is so valuable. Not only
does it cost nothing but it is better quality too.
Reason
#3 – Finally, Analytics it allows me to test everything.
Having such comprehensive data at my fingertips, means that
I can see the effect of any change to my site, the very next
day.
If
I change my home page, I can soon see the effect on my conversions
and watch whether visitors now navigate down a different route.
I can see if they spend more, or less time reading my new content
and I can see what it makes them do afterwards.
No
matter what tweaks I make, the results are rapidly available
to me and if things go wrong and traffic or conversions fall,
I can see immediately what needs to be done.
Back
to my original question. If you're not using Google Analytics
on your site. Why Not?
