Google Analytics: A Powerful Tool For Web Analytics and Traffic Analysis

Google Analytics is a free monitoring and analysis program used to analyze web traffic to your site. It is a powerful tool that every online retailer should be using. There is a wealth of information (most useful, some not) that will provide valuable insight on how traffic is getting to your website as well as what your visitors are viewing. There are dozens of books that cover Google Analytics in more detail, but here are some of the main benefits Google can provide:

Google Analytics can show you:

1. How many people visit your site each day
2. How long they visited your site and which pages were most popular
3. The number of first time visitors vs returning vistors
4. Where your traffic came from (which country, etc)
5. Who your top referral sources are
6. How much traffic is coming from natural search engine searches vs paid ppc advertising, or direct links
7. Your traffic trends over a period of time (trending up, trending down, etc)
8. Your number of pageviews, bounce rate, average time spent per page, etc.

In order to get started you start by signing up for a google account. On the ‘Business Solutions’ page, you will see links to Google
Analytics. After adding your site, you will be given a couple of options to verify that you are the owner of the website. The most common used method is adding a small piece of tracking code to any pages that you want to track. Some ecommerce and blogging platforms already have Google Analytics integrated thus allowing you to add the tracking code through an admin screen. If yours does not, you will need to add your tracking code to your web pages manually. Google offers a wide range of tutorials to help you get set up and use its analytics tools.

Keep in mind Google is not the only solution when it comes to traffic analysis. There are hundreds of 3rd party analytic services available that are fixed cost or subscription-based out there.

Most provide additional levels of service above and beyond what Google provides. The few I have tried are basically add-on type services where they analyze the data for you and providing additional reports that are polished and easy to understand. Some providers tie in other related services like PPC advertising, management of keywords, competitor analysis, etc. As the range of service goes up so does the price.

My experience is that your paying for extras here that you probably do not need in the early days. In the early days of your business, you need to learn how to do these things yourself so you understand what the reports are showing you. Regardless of how you get the data, its what you do with it that provides the real value. In a later post, I will talk about actions you can take based on the report data you receive so you can increasing your traffic.