Having an online presence for your business is essential nowadays. A study conducted by Pew Research Center revealed that 79% of Americans were shopping online. That is eight out of ten Americans who are purchasing products and services through the internet. Google Analytics is used to measure your business’s online data. This data is used to provide insight into how users are finding your website and what they are doing once there.

What Does Google Analytics Track?

There is no shortage of data that is tracked by Google Analytics. Any specific data you want and need will be provided. Google Analytics uses tracking codes to track the wide array of data that is important for enhancing your marketing strategy. This data includes but is not limited to:

  • Sales and sales revenue
  • Transactions
  • Page views and unique page views
  • Bounce rate
  • Time spent on a webpage
  • User demographics such as geographic location
  • Where users are coming from
  • Marketing strategies that work
  • Conversion rates
  • Loading time
  • And much more

The data that is tracked by Google Analytics fall into two different categories: acquisition data and behavior data. Acquisition data examines user activity and data from before they visit a webpage. This shows what media channels they are coming from, their demographic information, and what campaigns drove them to the site.

Behavior data is the information that Google Analytics collects when the user is active on your website. What webpages are most popular on your site, time spent on the website, and what specific pages they are visiting. This information can be used to change your website to cater to the user.

Why is Google Analytics a Necessity?

The online market is massive and continues to grow each year. You need to understand your data to successfully launch marketing campaigns. The data collected from Google Analytics can help increase your ROI and boost your SEO as marketing trends change. The information that Google Analytics provides webmasters is valuable and can make the difference between a business flourishing or flopping.

Understanding your audience is key to launching effective marketing campaigns. The information from Google Analytics tells you exactly who is visiting your website, what channels they are coming from, and what they are viewing. Increasing the traffic to your website generates new leads and can increase sales. Tracking your marketing campaigns with Google Analytics is the best way to improve your efforts.

Simplifying the Information

Google Analytics provides a full analysis of your website and user data. Looking at and trying to translate the information is confusing for most since there is a lot of data to sift through. Luckily, there are ways to simplify what you are looking at and put it into an easier-to-read format.

Summary reports: Google Analytics has an option you can enable to receive emails with a summary report whenever you like. This can be enabled by clicking the ‘reporting’ tab at the top of the Google Analytics page. You can determine the frequency of the emails, how you would like them to be formatted, and who will receive the emails. The report can be customized to fit your needs.

Reporting automation tools: several websites analyze the information being reported in Google Analytics and summarize it into a document for you. They show you the relevant information you need in an easy-to-read format. Your website metrics, such as traffic, will be translated into a written format and will explain why some data has changed.

Customize your dashboard: Google Analytics has a feature called dashboards. It is a group of widgets that allow you to receive an overview of the metrics and reports you value the most. A widget is a small application that displays the specific information it is used for. You can customize your dashboard to include the information you want. It can also be made to share with other people.

There is no restriction on how many widgets you can have. You are also able to create different dashboards in multiple areas. You can have a dashboard dedicated to data relating to SEO or a dashboard about your social media sites and campaigns.

Spreadsheet add-on: many people use spreadsheets as a way to organize and share their information. The Google Analytics add-on works with Google Sheets to make it easier to transfer and view information. The add-on allows you to have access to your Google Analytics data from within the spreadsheet. This helps you to create data visualizations, schedule when you get your reports and customize calculations.

Installing Google Analytics

Obtaining the services from Google Analytics is quite simple if you haven’t done so already. You will need a Google account (used for Gmail services). You can search for Google Analytics in your search engine or find the service under your account. Once you click the sign-up button, you will fill out the information about your website(s). Each Google Analytics account can have 50 websites managed underneath it. This step is also where you can configure the places your data can be shared.

Next, you need to put the tracking code that Google Analytics gives you and paste it into the coding for every web page of your site. Once the code is installed the rest of the work involves going through the settings and enabling features that you want. You can set up goals, a site search, and much more.

Final Thoughts

Businesses with an online presence should not pass up on the benefits of Google Analytics, especially since it comes with a free price tag. Not everyone can view a list of data and understand what they are looking at. Everyone wants to be able to use the data provided to help them reach their business’ full potential. This is hard to do if you can’t decipher the data.

There are many resources available to take the data collected by Google Analytics and put it into simpler formats and terms. Google Analytics collects a lot of data from multiple areas. Using tools that condense the information into what you need and want will make the experience using Google Analytics much easier. It will also allow you to easily understand what changes you need to make in your marketing strategy to improve your business.

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