How it works: Google Analytics
At Squirrels&Bears we believe in simplicity and we like to provide clear answers to your questions. In our #howitworks series we focus on simple explanations of various aspects of small business, highlighting the basic facts, what works and what doesn’t work. And we hope to make your life a little easier.
The Basics
Google Analytics is a premium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
Google Analytics’ approach is to show high-level, dashboard-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set.
Google Analytics uses a small piece of Javascript tracking code to collect data about your website visitors and their interactions on your website.
A properly set up and running Google Analytics account is one of the best ways to keep informed about your website and visitor behaviours.
Do:
Set up an analytics tracking code on your site – it allows Google to analyse the traffic to your site.
Create your own dashboard with your most important reports, so you can review them easily at a glance.
Use Google Tag Manager to collect actionable data so you can track your social media marketing ROI.
Create custom segments that reflect your most valuable customers so you can check the performance of these segments and see if you are on the right track.
Get your top reports emailed to you.
Filter the internal traffic to your web site to keep your team’s visits separate from external visitors – once the filter is set up, Google Analytics will not collect the data that is filtered out.
Set up site search for any website with a search box on it.
Don’t
Get lost in all the data – organise your metrics with the right views.
Panic if most of your organic keywords are not provided – this is to protect the user’s privacy by hiding the keywords they used to get to your website. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to uncover those missing keywords instead.
Ignore your bounce rate – if it’s too high, you should review the possible reasons for it and fix it.