In an increasingly online world, it can be hard to keep up with all the tools, platforms, and changes taking place. How are you supposed to run your business, interact with customers, keep up with social media trends, all while working on your SEO ranking? It’s a lot for anyone to handle all at once.
One tool that can be easy to overlook is Google Analytics. If you’ve made the mistake of doing this, things are about to change. We kindly ask you to run, not walk, over to the platform and get started ASAP. But first, we’ll share why this is one tool you just can’t underestimate!
First, we’ll start with the most pressing question… Does it cost you anything? The answer is no! Google Analytics is a completely free tool brought to you by Google.
What Is Google Analytics (GA)
You might be asking yourself, “what is Google Analytics?” That’s a great question! Simply put, it’s how Google tracks the metrics of how users interact with your website. It stores this data for you and keeps it in an easy to use platform.
In short, the platform gives you a complete picture related to your site performance. It collects a wide range of data and generates insightful reports. You can use those reports to learn more about your website and its users.
Some basic information collected by GA includes how many visitors your site gets, where users are coming from, how they use your site, how long they spend on each page, and so much more.
Why You Need It
Your website is the heart and soul of your online presence. Whether you have a small business website, a monetized blog, or an e-commerce store it’s a powerful tool.
By using Google Analytics, you’ll be able to have a better understanding of how effective your website is overall. Since it’s your most powerful marketing tool online, this is so important to be able to see real numbers and know with certainty that it’s working for you. Google Analytics helps with this by allowing you to glean important information, such as which online campaigns are driving the most traffic to your website or what content people are really looking for.
Where are your users located? What are the most popular pages on your website? Which marketing platforms are driving the most traffic to your site?
All of these questions, and so many more, can all be answered by utilizing Google Analytics.
The Most Valuable Metric
Google Analytics can seem overwhelming at first, but we promise this is a great problem to have! It gathers such a vast amount of data that you may not want to immediately dig into everything. If that’s the case, knowing where to start can be helpful. We suggest starting with your overall traffic volume.
The traffic volume is simply how many people are coming to your website on a daily basis. GA allows you to see this broken down by the day, week, month, or 3 month time period.
We love it because seeing how many people are actively on your site can be truly encouraging or a motivator to make a change. You can learn a lot about the performance of your website by monitoring the traffic. If traffic is increasing, something is working. Is traffic decreasing or stagnant? That could be signaling your website is broken or needs a refresh.
For newer websites, seeing your traffic increase can be a huge confidence booster! It helps keep you motivated knowing that you’re doing something right that’s driving traffic.
Other Helpful Metrics
If you have the chance, we really encourage you to take the free Google Analytics course for beginners. If that’s not possible, we at least want you to know about two more metrics we think are worth understanding at a basic level.
1. All Pages
The All Pages report is located in the “Site Content” section of the “Behavior” menu on the left-hand side of your Google Analytics dashboard.
This specific report displays all of the various pages on your website that people have looked at. You can look at this information in one day, week-long, month-long, or 3 month long time periods as well. It’s incredibly helpful in tracking what is bringing new users to your website and the content, services, or products they are more interested in. The results may surprise you!
Viewing the All Pages report will also show you which pages need to be improved, updated, or even done away with completely. The pages you want users to visit most should be optimized for conversions. If an important page isn’t getting the attention you need it to, you can make any necessary adjustments.
2. Acquisition Overview
While knowing that people are coming to your website is great, knowing where they come from can be even more insightful. The “Acquisition” option in your reports menu is on the left-hand side of your dashboard, clicking the “Overview” section will provide you with this information.
You will be able to see what is bringing people to your website. Social media, organic traffic, direct searches, and referrals are all tracked. You can even break it down further and for example, see the breakdown of traffic from specific social media sites. All you have to do is click the “social” wedge of the pie chart shown on the page. It’s as simple as that!
Diving Deep
The great thing about Google Analytics is that you’ll always find new ways to use it and new data to analyze. The more you interact with and explore all the GA has to offer, the more you’ll be able to get from it.
For most people, sticking to two or three simple reports is all you will ever need. Even if you only ever use it for the select few tools we discussed today, it can revolutionize your business presence online and ultimately lead to more sales/business. Who doesn’t want that?
If you can or have the interest to, we do encourage you to take advantage of the free beginners class to learn the basics. Take some time to peruse the platform and mess around with it. You won’t mess anything up unless you go into the admin tab, so you don’t have to worry about that. Take your time and familiarize yourself with its huge selection of metrics and we promise you’ll find new and exciting ways to learn about your business and see how you can improve upon it!
Was this article helpful to you? If you have any other questions about Google Analytics please feel free to contact us directly at https://fusiononemarketing.com/contact-us.