Modern business owners must harness the power of Google Analytics to optimise their brand. For businesses that operate online it is imperative to know how your digital efforts are tracking. Google Analytics provides comprehensive reporting features that can help elevate a business to new heights of success!

It can be one of the most efficient tools for securing new customers and driving conversions. However, if you’re new to the digital marketing arena you may be thinking, “what on Earth are they talking about?”. So, we are going to give you an introduction on how to use this powerful feature to your business’s ultimate advantage:

 

An introduction to Google Analytics

Don’t despair, because despite the jargonish name Google Analytics offers a free and easy way to track and analyse your website visitors. Your website could be receiving plenty of weekly visitors, but what good is that information without knowing what to do with it? This is where Google Analytics comes in to help you leverage this vital information.

Not only does Google Analytics track your visitor numbers, but it also provides insights in the following:

• How your website is performing
• What you can do to reach your goals
• How much traffic your website is receiving
• Where the traffic is coming from
• Social media activity
• Mobile app traffic
• Identify trends
• Integrate data to make informed decisions

And much more. With so much information at your fingertips, you simply cannot overlook the power that Google Analytics offers your business!

 

How to set up Google Analytics

Setting up Google Analytics couldn’t be easier:

1. Sign into your Google account
2. Sign into your Analytics account
3. Click the “admin” button on your dashboard’s left sidebar
4. Create an account or select your account
5. Select the drop-down menu & create your property
6. Click the “website” button & add your website’s URL and name
7. Select your timezone
8. Select your industry
9. Select “Data Streams” and add your stream
10. You will receive a Measurement ID in the top corner

 

How to sign up to Google Analytics

You must have a Google Account to operate Analytics. To start, go to google.com/analytics. Next, select Create an Account or Sign In from the left sidebar. You must fill in the required information:

• Account name
• Website name
• URL
• Industry
• Timezone
• Data-sharing settings

Click the “Create” button to finalise your account creation.

 

How to create Google Analytics for your website

You will then receive a <script> tracking code or measurement ID to analyse your website. You will receive a Tracking Code section once you finish creating your account. You must install that tracking code on each page you want to analyse.

To install, you can do one of the following:

• Copy and paste the tracking code directly onto your website template
• Check your website builder or host for an Analytics integration

Certain website builders like WordPress provide plug-ins that allow you to automatically add your tracking code to every page. Other website builders provide specific pages where you can place the tracking ID.

 

How to add users

 

Google Analytics makes collaboration simple. If you want to add team members to your Analytics account simply do the following:

1. Select the “Admin” button
2. Select an account and click “Access Management”
3. You can then add new users & create permissions
4. Set your team member’s permissions covering things like admin-level access or restricting them to analysing traffic

 

Some of the top Google Analytics features

Google Analytics is fantastic in the way that it offers a vast range of metrics that you can customise to your advantage. You can easily access each of Google Analytics features through the left sidebar.

Some of the best features include:

 

Traffic sources

Know exactly where your customers and visitors are coming from. To do so, simply click on the “Acquisitions” button on the left sidebar and will tell you all your traffic sources. This includes channels, organic searches, and referrals.

You will be able to see which search terms your customers and visitors are using that took them to your website. Analytics, as well as scanning its own Google search engine, also scans the likes of AOL, Bing, and Yahoo.

 

Custom reporting

Custom reporting allows you to structure metrics based around your own categories that won’t be found in the original settings. For example, if you own a real estate website, you can configure your metrics based around the location of potential buyers, new/returning visitors, their frequency and more. You can also add external sources to further optimise the platform’s power. You can do this by simply selecting the Customisation” button.

 

Social settings

There is absolutely no point to simply running a social media marketing campaign. You must track the results to optimise its performance – this is where Google Analytics is your ultimate appendage. Analytics can integrate social media into your tracking metrics. You can easily view social media data through using the Audience Comparison or Explore reporting features.

What’s more, you can easily view your Audience Comparison report with a Traffic Acquisition report before configuring your settings to only see your social media analytics. You can also create Exploration reports through selecting “Explore” and then “Free Form” on the sidebar. It will generate a report that you can use to analyse your social media engagement. What’s more, you can easily duplicate past reports with the Explore function. There are also a range of customisable metrics you can enlist if an important metric for you doesn’t exist.

 

Analytics terms you should add to your vocabulary

Using Analytics is easy, but there is some jargon that you should familiarise yourself with:

• Account: This is where each property is located on your dashboard. You can create various properties in a single account or create different accounts for various properties.
• Property: The website or mobile app you want to analyse.
• Measurement ID: This is the unique code that allows Google Analytics to report on your website
• Conversion: This is when a visitor becomes a customer or performs an action to suggest that they will become a customer (like signing up to your newsletter).
• Channel/traffic source: This shows where your traffic was generated, including social media, search engines, website links, emails and referrals.
• User engagement: This is the amount of time each visitor spends running or viewing your app or website.
• Bounce rate: This is the percentage of users who only look at one page before exiting your website.
• Event: This is each visitor’s behaviour on your website, including downloading files, clicking ads, watching videos etc.
• Landing page: This provides information about the first page to be viewed when opening your website.
• Organic search: This provides information about visitors entering your website from a link on a search engine result page.
• Segment: This is a way to filter information, including categories and the type of visitors your website receives.

 

Why your business needs Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers powerful metrics that help you analyse your online efforts. It can give your business the ultimate edge in understanding your audience and their behaviour.

Some awesome Analytics benefits include:

 

Understand your audience’s behaviour

Google Analytics provides the complete picture of your audience’s customer journey. You can use the Google Analytics reporting and visualisation features to see what attracts your customers and how they engage with your website.

 

Know where to improve

Google Analytics exists to show you what is working well and what could use a little extra attention. Building an online brand is all about refinement, and so Analytics can help you by showing you where traffic is dropping or what simply isn’t converting. You can also see which pages are successful and which ones customers aren’t engaging with – something which can help you refresh those pages with more engaging content.

 

You can set KPIs for your digital goals

Setting key performance indicators (KPIs) against your digital objectives gets easier with the more data you analyse. For example, you might be looking to attract new website visitors. Here, you can use Analytics to see any growth in social media-driven website visitors. You can easily see what kind of social media content is successful (which you can then go on to replicate in the future!).

 

Your business will grow with Analytics

Google Analytics exists to take your online brand to the next level. What’s more, it was intentionally created to be an easy-to-use platform that can elevate your marketing endeavours. Of course, operating Google Analytics is not for every business owner, especially when there is so much to be done regarding daily operations.

In this case, you can always enlist the help of experts to track your online business endeavours and provide comprehensive advice on what is making gains and what needs improving. This is the digital marketer’s forte and they help many businesses achieve massive success through the Analytics application!