Google is the best known and most frequently used search engine in the world. The internet giant has also developed a number of tools to help you monitor your website. Today, we will be taking a closer look at the first of those tools: Google Analytics.
This is one of Google’s most powerful tools for marketers and ITers. You can use it to measure and track all of your website traffic, both to and from your website. This will not only help you understand how your visitors use your website, but also who they are and how they ended up on your website. You determine what kind of information and data is important to you, which will be collected in your Dashboard.
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Demographics: who visits your website, including location and language
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Social media: what social networks do your visitors come from and how are your “share on social media” buttons used
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Technology: logs which browsers, operating systems and networks your visitors use to visit your website
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Mobile data: discover how much of your traffic is mobile
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Traffic sources: analyse which websites, keywords, search engines, … lead traffic to your website
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Popular content: which pages are visited most; which content works and which doesn’t
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Conversions: let Google Analytics know what you consider a conversion (completed form, appointment made, …) and discover who and what converts
Measuring is knowing
Why is it important to collect this data? Well, Google Analytics can give you a better understanding of your website, what works and what doesn’t. These insights can be used to develop or adapt your business strategy. Here below are three important metrics and what they can mean for your strategy.
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Learn everything about your target audience: are they men or women? What age group? Which interests do they have in common? When do they visit your website? This information will teach you how and where to best contact your target audience.
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Do your visitors mostly come from Google, or do they click through via Facebook? Or do they come to your website directly? Knowing that will, for example, tell you whether to use Google and/or Facebook ads to increase your traffic.
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Do you know how visitors click on your website? This information can help you make your website more user-friendly so that a visitor will immediately find what he/she is looking for. This will also ensure that your content is found by your target audience.
Pro tips:
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If you link Google AdWords to your Google Analytics, you will get more detailed reporting in AdWords. In Analytics, you will also gain more insight into the performance of your ads.
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To gather more information about organic traffic (and optimise your position in the Google Search Resultsà, you can also link up Google Search Console.
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If you want to get even more out of Google Analytics, you can study your visitors’ behaviour more with the use of Google Tag Manager.
The starting point
As you can see, you can do a lot with Google Analytics. Everything that happens on your website can be measured, so it is very important to set up your Analytics correctly. Our Google experts can help with that! Together we will look at everything you want to know and then we will setup your Dashboard. We will send you detailed monthly reports about your website.