Did you know that Google Analytics can set cookies that last for up to 2 years? These cookies are useful to identify returning visitors and track their experience and behavior on a particular website.
But what exactly is Google Analytics and what do website analytics allow you to do? Why should you spend time tracking numbers such as how many visitors your website had this month, from what countries, etc? As it turns out, keeping track of such numbers is essential to growing your online business because what you can measure, you can control.
Keep reading to learn more about Google Analytics and how beneficial it can be for your business.
What Is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to monitor and keep track of all the traffic coming to your website. It also brings multiple tools into one place such as Search Console or Google Ads. Google Analytics displays detailed reports on website traffic, allowing you to make important adjustments for the benefit of your online business.
What Do Website Analytics Allow You to Do - Exploring the Answers
Google Analytics is a very versatile tool that can be used for a variety of purposes. It's essential to use it for your advertising campaigns as well as to monitor the popularity of your website. Here are the some of the most important aspects of Google Analytics.
Device Overview
Today's websites are accessed from multiple parts of the world and from various devices such as tablets, laptops, mobile phones, etc.
The Device Overview feature allows you to see how much traffic you get from different gadgets. If you get almost no traffic from mobile phones, this might mean that your website is not displayed properly on mobile devices and you should focus on this problem first.
Since more and more people are accessing the internet on their phones, it's paramount to have a mobile-friendly website. If you have a restaurant or coffee shop, the majority of your visitors will probably access your website from a mobile device while looking for places to eat, so you need to optimize it as much as possible.
Bounce Rates
Every website owner wants to have visitors that stay on their web pages. The quicker a visitor leaves, the worse it is for the website owner. The Bounce Rate displays information on visitors' behavior such as how many people visited a web page, how many left after just 1-2 seconds, how many returned, etc. Having this information helps you fine-tune your web pages to make them more attractive for viewers, so they don't leave your website.
Call-to-Action Clicks
As you probably know already, a call-to-action button is meant to make the visitor or reader do something such as subscribe to your newsletter, visit another web page or buy a product. You probably have many CTA buttons on your website, but how efficient are they? If you get few CTA clicks in comparison with daily visits, chances are that your CTA could use some improvement or fine-tuning.
Incoming Traffic and Conversions
Increasing traffic to your website is paramount for the success of your business. Google Analytics displays large graphs and statistical information on how many visitors you have every day, from where they access your website, etc. At the same time, you'll also see statistics regarding conversions. A conversion happens when a visitor becomes a paying customer.
If you sell products or services online, you definitely want to have more conversions. If a very small percent of your visitors convert, this means that you need to improve your sales funnel or selling strategy. You cannot improve something without seeing specific numbers every day and Google Analytics shows you these numbers with great accuracy.
Keeping Track of Referrers
A referrer is a website that sends you a lot of traffic. For example, if you published a guest post on a large blog with a backlink to your website, you might see a lot of traffic coming from that particular website. In this case, you have an effective referrer. Google Analytics shows you from where your traffic comes and if one website seems to send you a lot of visitors, you should focus on it more than the others.
Information like this helps you strengthen your business relationships with other websites or business managers online. You can send them traffic from your website, they send you traffic from their website and everybody wins from this scenario.
Real-Time Visitors
This report is also useful if you want to see how a new article on your blog
is performing. In this case, Google Analytics displays a large graph with real-time visitors on your website. This is a sum of all the visitors on your website pages at that moment. Information like this can be very valuable and it can be easily accessed from the Google Analytics Dashboard.
Average Time Spent on Website
It's great if you get a lot of traffic on your website, but what if visitors leave quickly, your conversions will remain low. Similar to the Bounce Rate, the average time spent on a website
report can tell you more about how well you capture the attention of your visitors.
Do you have a video that's 10 minutes long but visitors leave after just 1 minute? Chances are that you need to improve your video editing skills or your content choices. Have you created a long blog post but most readers leave after just 20 seconds? Maybe you need to refine your intro and hook to make the readers stay on the page and continue to read.
Make Sure That You Install Google Analytics as Soon as Possible!
Hopefully, this article provided sufficient answers to your original question - what do website analytics allow you to do? The next step would be to install Google Analytics on your website and use their step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use this tool correctly.
We understand that digital marketing can be a little bit confusing at times, especially if you're not particularly tech-savvy with information technology. Contact us today
and speak with one of our experienced specialists who can help you install Google Analytics and run a successful marketing campaign for your website!
