Google Analytics 101

As an owner or manager of a small or medium sized business, you know it is critical to have a website in our modern business environment. You even know that using social media and online campaigns is a necessity in our tech driven business world. Unfortunately, it is not enough to simply build a website or be active on social media. Businesses need to completely understand who is visiting their website, what brought them there, how long they stayed and what caught their attention while they were there. That is where Google Analytics comes into play.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free Web analytics service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. All you need to get started is a Google account. One of the major benefits of using Google Analytics is to gain complete freedom in managing your website’s content.

What can Google Analytics do?

For small and medium sized businesses with small marketing budgets, Google Analytics might be the perfect choice. It has some major marketing advantages that will help you monitor and track your website including:

• Target your online visitors – Google Analytics can help you to keep track of the kind of visitors coming to your website and use popular keywords that may be used in the process of searching for specific products. By using this information, you can target a niche audience who may be keen on purchasing your products.
• Measure the results of your marketing campaign – Using the various functions of Google Analytics you can measure whether your campaign has been successful in reaching the right types of visitor and whether that visitor to your website has converted to a buying customer.
• Improve your web page quality – Do visitors bother to read your blog, click on the links or take heed of your call-to-action? Google Analytics can help you improve areas of your website that are not doing what it should be doing, whether it is placement, content or navigation issues.
• Measure Changes over time– Google Analytics can use data visualization tools including a dashboard, scorecards and motion charts, which display changes in data over time.
• Integration with other Google Tools– Since this is a Google product, it has the advantage of integration with other Google products, such as AdWords, Public Data Explorer and Website Optimizer.
• It’s FREE!-  Google Analytics offers many advanced marketing evaluation tools that would normally cost your company a pretty penny.

Categorised in: Blog, Marketing