Google Analytics is a web-based platform which allows you to collect data about the visitors to your website.
It is a free tool that helps you understand the number of visitors you have on your site, how they found you and how they interact with your website once they are there, and even whether they converted into a lead or customer.
Five Benefits of using Google Analytics:
- It is completely free of charge. – Did we mention that already?
- You are able to find out how your visitors land on your website.
- What keywords your visitors type in to find your website.
- Whether they can via another website – perhaps once you are paying to advertise on?
- Understand the ‘bounce rate’ – google analytics tracks what percentage of people only visited one page on your site before leaving. Your bounce rate can be directly associated with the relevance of your content. If your bounce rate is high make sure your keywords are not misleading and think of ways to encourage visitors to stay.
- You are able to identify which pages your visitors look at most and the journey they take through pages. If there are any pages that are being neglected, you can think about ways to encourage visitors to flow through to them.
- Benefit from visitor segmentation – how many are new visitors, how many are returning, their geographical location, the device they are looking at your website on. This gives you a better understanding of whether you are reaching your target audience, or perhaps you are attracting an audience you haven’t really thought about before.
Ultimately, Google Analytics helps you to better understand the way people use your website, in order to fine tune it and optimise the benefit it gives you within your sales and marketing strategy.
So the big question is – How do you get it?
1. Create a new Google Analytics account if you do not already have one. Visit www.google.com/analytics, click the Sign in to Google Analytics button (top right), and follow the on-screen instructions.
2. Once signed in you will need to complete a few simple boxes including, account name and website address.
3. Google Analytics will then provide you with a tracking code, and instructions on how to add this to your website. If you have a website manager, such as Momentum Partnership, they will be able to do this for your very easily.
4. You can then verify the tracking code in your google analytics account to ensure it is working.
Google will then start collecting your website data for you, so you can start getting to know your audience better!