Experts write a lot about Google Analytics. But mostly thematic instructions, guides, and articles are intended for contextual advertising specialists and marketers. Entrepreneurs and business owners continue to perceive this service as Pandora’s box that they are in no rush to open. This is not good because most of the target audience has long gone to buy in the global network. But exactly how many purchases are made on your online store’s site, who is interested in goods and services, where these people live, is often known only to an Internet marketing specialist. Such information rarely reaches senior managers promptly. But data underlies the vector of business development and budget planning for promotion.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a web service that gives you accurate data about the use of your site. After you add the tracking code to your website, you will get detailed traffic data to it. There are many options for audience segmentation. With it, you can track your users, their geographic location, interests, the devices they use to access your website, as well as their dwell time and bounce rate. You can also receive data on the amount of traffic you get from referrals, and finally, you can see how your website is fulfilling in terms of speed.
The service has both free and paid features. The free version of Google Analytics can analyze 5 million pages per month, which is not enough to get an overall picture of the sites. Therefore, eventually, most still resort to using the paid Premium version.
Benefits for your business
Google Analytics will show important business data about website visitors (current and potential customers):
- From what source do customers come, bringing the most significant profit to the company;
- Which pages do users move on? This information will help analyze interest in specific positions;
- What is the gender and age structure of website visitors? Who brings more profit (men or women). Check your vision of the target audience of the proposed product or service with accurate data captured by Google Analytics.
- Where are the users visiting your website and making purchases geographically? Maybe it’s time to scale up your business and offer delivery of goods to other regions of your country or neighboring countries?
- What are potential customers interested in? The information will be helpful to increase the loyalty of the target audience. You can make attractive thematic offers to website visitors based on the data. The better you know your audience, the faster and better you satisfy their needs. Also, this data will help set up targeted advertising campaigns in Social Media.
- From which devices users most often visit your website (very often on the Internet, it happens from smartphones). For example, a high bounce rate from mobile devices for companies engaged in e-commerce may indicate incorrect display of the website from a phone or inconvenient navigation of the mobile version of the resource.
How does Google Analytics work?
Statistics are collected using the Google Analytics counter on the company’s server. All pages of the web resource contain the so-called JavaScript counter code. At the first stage, users go to the web resource from the mailing list, by a link from other sites, from the search engine results for any request, by direct transition (when the user types the website’s name in the address bar). After they click, they land on a website with a Google Analytics code. Here, information about them and their activities are automatically tracked and recorded (e.g., page URL, user device display resolution, session time data, etc.). Then a list of cookies is generated, which will later allow the visitor to be identified.
The Google Analytics counter code tracks the user and sends data to servers for further processing. After a certain period, the server will process the received data and update user reports in GA. Generating reports takes time (from a couple of hours to several days).
Information visualization
In addition to standard reports, Google Analytics provides many opportunities to self-assemble the necessary data. Collect all the indicators you are interested in and upload them into a single form. Then go to Google Data Studio and present them in a clear graphical way. To do this, log in to the system and add data from Google Analytics. A visual comparison of data and analysis can also be obtained through connector dashboards – end-to-end analytics systems. Uploading financial data to Google Analytics can be done manually, according to the format accepted by the system, or automatically.
Business development
The development of your business on the Internet and the search for effective online advertising sources for your projects should be entrusted to professionals. Unfortunately, SEO is a complex process that requires high competence on the part of the optimizer and the introduction of additional professional tools. And sometimes, a business leader can’t cope with Google analytics. Thus, working with an SEO agency that offers SEO consulting services to manage your business’s marketing side better is indispensable. The good news is that SEO consulting services provide a full range of services for promoting your business on the Internet, and you do not need to contact several contractors.
Final word
Google Analytics is a large number of opportunities to study advertising campaigns on the Internet deeply. This service will allow you to refine the website based on data from users to increase its conversion and sales!
Just a few features of Google Analytics for Business have been covered today. It would be best to start working with this system by compiling a list of significant business indicators. Then request access to the system from contractors if a third-party agency is engaged in Internet marketing.
Explore website performance metrics. They will help to aim at the suitable vector of business development. You are faced with global and ambitious tasks. Google Analytics will help solve them and allow you to move more confidently towards winning leadership positions in the niche. Leave more detailed analytics to specialists offering SEO consulting services. Do not go far into the technical part, delegate and trust the team. Together you will achieve more.
