All About Google Analytics
- Category: Web Word of the Week
- Created on Monday, 27 June 2011 18:33
Ever wonder how many visitors your website gets? Wouldn’t it be helpful if you could tell what towns/states/countries those visitors were coming from? What if you could tell how long they stayed on your website and how they navigated through it? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell if that link you are paying for on that paid listing website was actually generating visitors? Now you can! Google Analytics is a completely free service that makes all of this possible.
The Standard in Website Tracking
Google Analytics has become the free standard in visitor tracking. Don’t let the price fool you! Google Analytics is a full enterprise-class web analytics solution. In this case, you don’t get what you pay for…you get way more! It gives you invaluable insights into how people interact with your website and how effective your marketing efforts are. Let’s take a closer look and see how easy it is to use.
Getting Started with Google Analtyics
First, you will need to create a Google account, if you don’t have one already. Once you are logged in, visit www.google.com/analytics to setup your first account. Google walks you through the entire setup process and it is as simple as adding one piece of code to each page of your website to activate the Google Analtyics tracking. It doesn’t matter who originally created your website, Google Analytics can be added to any website.
A Closer Look at the Dashboard
This is the first report you will see when you log in. This Dashboard can be customized to display the reports that you are most interested in. Each report you access can be added to the Dashboard page, by clicking the “Add to Dashboard” button at the top of each page. By default, the Dashboard displays a quick overview of how your website is performing.
The visitors graphic (see below) shows a timeline of how many visitors you have received on each day. You can adjust the period of time to display, by default it always displays the last month period. The Site Usage section(see below) shows a quick report of the number of visits, pageviews, pages per visit, current bounce rate, average time spent of the website and percentage of new visits.
What is the Bounce Rate?
The Bounce Rate is the percentage of single page visits or visits in which the person left your site immediately after visiting the homepage. It shows the percentage of visitors who leave as soon as they get to your homepage, they don’t drill down into your site and visit any other pages. This percentage can help determine if visitors are finding what they are looking for on your main page.
Let's See Some Reports!
- Map Overlay Report
From the Visitors tab you can view the Map Overlay report (see below). It shows how many visitors from each city, state and country there have been to your website.
- Mobile Devices Report
From the Visitors tab you can view the Mobile Devices report (see below), showing how many mobile hits you are getting to your website. These statistics can be very valuable if you are trying to decide whether or not to offer a mobile-friendly version of your website.
- Traffic Sources Report
Under the Traffic Sources tab, you can access statistics about how your visitors are finding you. It shows percentages for how much of your traffic is coming from direct traffic, referring websites and search engines. If you access the Referring Sites report under the Traffic Sources tab, it will show you which websites are sending you referral links that people are clicking on.
You Need Google Analytics!
Do you know how your website is performing or how much traffic it gets? As you can see from this quick review, Google Analytics can prove whether or not your website is working for you. Using these free tools can help you determine how to improve your website and how to get more traffic.
Contact us today at 434-990-1180 if you would like to add Google Analytics to your website. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
