Google analytics is a tool that gathers data about websites on a constant basis. This data is then placed into reports that receive updates once per day. This remarkable tool is available for all websites. The tool tracks the data by including a small piece of code near the closing tag of the page. Certain Contact Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress offer this code free as a plug-in. Web designers can also add the code into the web page with proper HTML coding.
Webmasters Love Google Analytics
The Google Analytics provides a wealth of information for website managers and owners. The following outline covers some of the main points for people that are just learning of it use.
Google Analytics Dashboard
Whenever a person logs into the Google Analytics the first screen that appears is called the Dashboard. As you might imagine, the dashboard is an overview of all the different information that is available. Customization of the dashboard is possible through a drag and drop technique. As far as the default settings go, here is what you will see:
- The time period for data – This time period can be modified for any time range going back to when Analytics was first added to the site.
- Visitors – Report of daily visitors to the site. A drop down menu will give you the option to display a graph of visitors along with one of the following 5 items. Alternatively, you can choose any two items to plot on a graph.
- Usage – This item measures the number of page views, visits to the page, and how many pages were viewed by each visitor. Bounce rate is an important figure in the usage category. This represents the number of people that exited the site once they viewed one page. Average time on the site does not include the visits in the bounce rate. New visits provide an idea of how many people are coming to the site for the very first time. All of these items offer greater detail on the analytics site.
- Map – This is handy for showing the physical location of each visitor. More detail can be gained by choosing the ‘view report’ function. The state and city for each visitor will actually be shown.
- Source of traffic – The three main categories for source of the traffic are direct visitors, which means the visitor actually typed in the domain name, organic, which came from a search engine, and sites that refer visitors to your site via links. The referrals are shown in great detail.
- Content – The number of visitors that viewed each page is listed allowing you to see which material is popular with clients and which material is less important.
- Export/email – This function allows you to export information into a report that can be viewed in other software. You can also send the report by email.
Google Analytics Visitor Area
The visitor icon has a drop down menu with different choices. This is an information rich area that provides a lot of important data.
- Technical data – All types of technical information is provided such as the internet browsers in use, how fast the connection speed is for users, the user’s main operating system from their computer, and screen resolution.
- Benchmarking – Provides comparison data for your site with other sites that are approximately the same size.
- Trending/loyalty – This data is dependent on the passage of time. It illustrates which measures are gaining in popularity as well as those that are losing popularity. The loyalty function lists the visitors as well as how many times they have returned to the site, how long they visited, and the various pages that they visited.
Content Area
The reports in the Content area show the search terms linked to individual pages.
- Top content – This is the page or pages hat get the most traffic
- Top landing pages – Although the majority of people will start at the home page, certain pages will get visits based on search engine results.
- Top exit pages – This shows which pages are basically turning customers away. You would hope that the ordering page with confirmation data would be the highest exit rated page.
- Navigation – Illustrates the way people are moving around within the site, how they arrived at your site and where they went after leaving your site. In addition, this data can be shown for each page.
- Entrance keywords – List of the keywords or phrases that attracted the most visitors.
- Site overlay – Illustration of your home page with percentages explaining the links that visitors clicked on
Google Analytics also works hand in hand with another popular Google tool, Adsense. Your cost per click information can be combined with the Analytics data, which will show the potential profit from your investment into paid advertising. This allows you to see how much each click is costing side by side with the actions of the visitor.
Google Analytics has many more features than this simple outline can provide. Reviewing and studying the actions of visitors can provide insights into those things that are working versus the items that need work or removal.