How To Use Google Analytics For Business

If you were feeling inspired by Gemma’s look at the Business Benefits of Google Analytics yesterday then our new video explains how to get started and the ways we use Google Analytics for our clients.

Hi. Today I’m going to give you a brief introduction to Google Analytics. Now Google Analytics is a platform which allows you to collect data about the visitors to your website. It allows you to collect a whole host of information about the user journey, from how they arrived at your website, what they’ve done once there, and also how they converted.

Now, there are several reasons why you would want to collect and analyse this data, from optimising your marketing campaigns to understanding the usability of your website to also understanding where best to allocate your budget.

Now, the installation process of Google Analytics is really simple. All you need to do is visit their website and follow a step-by-step sign-up process. This will involve providing basic information, such as your domain and time zone, that kind of thing.

At the end of this process, you’ll be provided with a tracking code. It’s as simple as making sure that this tracking code is inserted onto all pages of your website before the closing head tag.

Once the tracking code’s in place, the data will start collecting. You can view this data within the Google Analytics user interface. This interface is split into three main sections, an ABC model — Acquisition, Behaviour, and Conversions.

The acquisition reports cover everything about how the user reached your site, so whether or not the source was organic or paid, what sites they came from, whether or not they came from a social profile. The behaviour reports cover all of the user’s behaviour whilst on your site, so how long they were on your site, which pages they viewed, the journey through the actual pages that they took.

Then last, but not least, the conversion reports. Now, these require a little bit of additional set-up, which is simple to do through the Admin panel. It just involves setting up a couple of goals. Now this can be any desired action on your website. So it could be the view of a certain page. It could be the sign-up of a newsletter, or it could be a transaction. Once you set up these goals, it will then start tracking the data within the conversion reports. This will allow you to understand the conversion process and how best to optimise your website so that you can increase that number of conversions.

There are two other sections that are worth covering — the audience reports, which cover everything about your visitor. So that’s kind of the demographics, the interests, their location. All that stuff’s really important for audience profiling, so you can better understand your audience and how to target them. The second one is real time reporting. Now this allows you to understand real time data, so who’s on your website at the moment, what pages are most important at that particular time of viewing the data. And it’s also really good for testing code and things on your site.

Last, but not least, I just want to cover customisation. Google Analytics is a really simple tool to use, and it’s really simple to set up. But it’s also very flexible and allows you to carry out a lot of customisations. So as you become more advanced with using the platform, the possibilities are actually endless of what you can track. So, if you’re looking for that additional data collection, then the facility is there.

I hope that covers everything and gives you a brief introduction of the platform. So thank you for listening today, and feel free to contact us by any of the social profiles which will follow.