Using Google Analytics Effectively

Google Analytics is a website usage measurement tool, provided free by Google.

The purpose of Google Analytics is to provide webmasters with a tool that gives both detailed and summary information about how users interact with a website, and also how many users visit the site, and how they found it.

All of this information is very interesting.  However, on its own it might not be considered especially useful, except perhaps for those people who delight in littering management reports with meaningless but pretty graphs in order to make it look like something good is happening.

However, looking under the cover of Google Analytics, and truly understanding what the reports tell you, is not just important - it can make the difference between your website succeeding and failing.  Google Analytics is not about pretty pictures. It is about understanding your customers!

Understanding Google Analytics Equals Understanding Your Customers

Google Analytics tells you a wide range of information.  Some of this information is straightforward, some is more cerebral.  However, the benefits of understanding the exact picture of what your website users are doing can make a significant difference to your bottom line. 

For example:

• What browsers do people use to view your website? 
• Does your website work in all the browsers people commonly use? 
• Are users of PDA’s more likely to abandon your shopping process before paying than typical web users?
• What keywords that you pay for in Adwords give you better ROI than others? 
• Which keywords effectively cost you more to sell through than you get back in revenue?
• Where do people abandon your website?
• Which search engines bring you reasonable traffic?
• Which 3rd party links provide you with reasonable traffic? 

All the questions above and thousands of others can be answered using Google Analytics and a little understanding. For example, have you considered whether PDA users, or mobile phone users, might attempt to interact with you via your website – what if they make up 10% of your website users, but you website doesn’t work effectively in such circumstances?  Would you be prepared to ignore 10% of your potential customers?

What if you bid on a range of keywords in Google Adwords?  Let’s say you have a monthly budget of £1,000 and for that you get 2,000 clicks each month.  Google Adwords might help you double the useful traffic you get by determining which keywords work well and generate revenue, and which ones don’t.  Wouldn’t you like to double the traffic you get from pay-per-click, and increase the revenue generated even more so?

Clearly, some websites might already be performing reasonably well by chance, and so not all websites would be able to see the same gains as others. However, it is the feedback loop that Google Analytics provides that helps determine where action can be taken to improve the overall performance of the website, both as a whole, and in particular activities such as pay-per-click.

Find Out More

If you are interested in installing or analysing Google Analytics to improve the ROI of your website, call us during office hours on 0871 900 8407, or contact us now.