An Overview Of Google Analytics
- By Sabina Kucz
- Published 04/18/2011
- Tutorials
- Unrated
Google Analytics is such an informative and genius tool it really does play an important part in your business statistics and overview. Although you can get stats from your server which will advise similar information, the Analytics tool takes the same info and goes that little bit deeper.
For a short basic summary of your site it's useful to first see the number of visitors to the site within the last 30 day period. From this total you are able to see how many of these visits were indeed unique. You can then view to see how many of the total visits came through search engines, third party websites or if they had typed your site name directly into the URL bar.
Further more you can also view who the referring sites were, this I find highly valuable, for the purpose of paid for listings or advertising campaigns. If you have paid a third party website to display your services or goods then this helps to track the campaign and see if this works, and therefore be able to see if this was a good investment.
Bounce rate is a very important feature too. Not only does Analytics tell you how many people have visited the site but
it also gives you information on how long they've stayed on the site and combines the total to produce an average bounce rate percentage. A good bounce rate is said to be anything below forty percent. A fantastic bounce is anything below twenty percent
All of the above is accessible via website server stats you may say, however one highly useful tool that Analytics can do that no other stats can is to set funnels. You can virtually track all your visitor movements. This allows you to set the funnel to show where your visitors go to from landing on your home page, it can even show you where they go if they leave your website. Armed with this info you can then see which product or service is of most interest to your visitors and also which page is of least interest so you can then make this page more informative and keep your visitors on this page for longer.
So how does Google make this work? Well basically Google captures all user info from people who don't clear their cache/cookies. This is why the stats will never be 100% accurate as there are many of us who clear our internet data on a regular basis. It really is meant to be used as a guideline, a reference for your company profile on line. All in all a good nifty little tool.
For a short basic summary of your site it's useful to first see the number of visitors to the site within the last 30 day period. From this total you are able to see how many of these visits were indeed unique. You can then view to see how many of the total visits came through search engines, third party websites or if they had typed your site name directly into the URL bar.
Further more you can also view who the referring sites were, this I find highly valuable, for the purpose of paid for listings or advertising campaigns. If you have paid a third party website to display your services or goods then this helps to track the campaign and see if this works, and therefore be able to see if this was a good investment.
Bounce rate is a very important feature too. Not only does Analytics tell you how many people have visited the site but
All of the above is accessible via website server stats you may say, however one highly useful tool that Analytics can do that no other stats can is to set funnels. You can virtually track all your visitor movements. This allows you to set the funnel to show where your visitors go to from landing on your home page, it can even show you where they go if they leave your website. Armed with this info you can then see which product or service is of most interest to your visitors and also which page is of least interest so you can then make this page more informative and keep your visitors on this page for longer.
So how does Google make this work? Well basically Google captures all user info from people who don't clear their cache/cookies. This is why the stats will never be 100% accurate as there are many of us who clear our internet data on a regular basis. It really is meant to be used as a guideline, a reference for your company profile on line. All in all a good nifty little tool.
