Google Analytics How-to

Hello Analytics Peoples!

I’m terribly sorry that you haven’t heard from me in a couple of weeks.  I’ve been moving, and it’s throwing the whole world into chaos.  There’s good news though…the move is finished, the boxes are unpacked, and the furniture is all (almost) in place.  I can finally think again.

And I can concentrate on Google Analytics, too.  In fact, I had a nice conversation with Tim Bourquin over at SmallBusinessPodcast.com on Wednesday of this week.  Tim’s a great guy, and I enjoyed talking to him.  You can listen to the podcast September 21st.  Actually, Mary and I both spoke with Tim, so there will be two podcasts that go live the same day.

During the conversation with Tim, he and I discussed how you can use the data that Google Analytics collects for you.  It was a fun conversation.  Of course, most of the information in the podcast is covered in the book, too, which you should now be able to find at any local bookstore.  I actually found copies of it at my local Barnes and Noble in Alabama.  If it’s there, I have to assume it’s everywhere.

In the conversation with Tim, we talked about what the most useful feature of  Google Analytics is, and to be honest, I have a hard time just naming one.  There’s so much to learn about your site from the data that Analytics collects.  I think I’ve already told you about learning about a link from years ago that’s still driving traffic to my site.  And in the book, we talk (a lot) about how we discovered that my site is not user friendly because of the program used to design it.

One thing that I haven’t talked to you about is learning where users are leaving my site.  A large majority of users bounce–that is they land on a page and immediately leave the site from that page.  And, as it turns out, that’s due to the whole problem with the site design.  I did, however, learn that users tend to spend more time on the content pages than on the information pages.  That tells me that I could add more content to my site, redesign it in a program that actually supports browsers other than Internet Explorer, and my site would not only have more quality visits, but it would also have visits that last longer.  In other words, I could provide more value to my site visitors, so they would spend more time on the site.

With Google Analytics, there is a little something for everyone.  I don’t sell products on my site, but you might.  And if you do, you can learn all kinds of interesting information about how users travel through your site and ultimately arrive at the decision to complete (or not) a purchase.  That kind of information is simply invaluable.

We did our first online chat about Google Analytics this week.  It was a fun chat with lots of interesting people and questions.  The chat transcript should be available after this weekend.  But one thing I noticed during the chat and I think it is especially applicable to small and micro-businesses, is that people have heard of Google Analytics, they just aren’t entirely sure what it will do for them.

Let me help you with that a little.  Google Analytics is a tool for measuring the traffic on your web site.  Now, Google Analytics will measure your traffic in a variety of ways including where your traffic comes from, how long they spend on your site, and where they exit your site.

This is all very valuable information.  For example, remember my post from last week?  I would never have known that Writers Write was still linked to my site if I hadn’t been using Google Analytics.  My measurements also show me that a large number of my visitors exit my site after they hit the front page.

I suspect the reason for that is because the site is designed using Microsoft PUblisher, and so it’s only accessible from a recent version of Internet Explorer.  The site just won’t render properly for other browsers.  (I’ll change that…eventually!)

Another use for Google Analytics is to track the keywords that are driving traffic to your site.  You can not only see the performance of keywords that you’re paying for if you use a pay-per-click service, but you can also gain insight into keywords that draw a lot of traffic but that you aren’t paying for.  This will help you to better target your keyword campaigns.

The next most popular question was something along the lines of, “I use a log analyzer provided by my hosting provider, why do I need Google Analytics?”  The easy answer to that is because the chances are that Google Analytics is much easier to understand than the log analyzer that your hosting provider offers.

Google Analytics is a very visual program.  There are graphs and charts with all of the measurements that are collected, so there’s no guessing at what the numbers mean.  Google draws you a picture.  How much easier could it be?  In addition to that, Google Analytics probably picks up a lot of information that your log analyzer doesn’t.

There are several chapters in the book that explain the differences between a well-known log analyzer and Google Analytics, so if you’re really interested in the differences check it out.

So, if I had to give you one sentence about why you should use Google Analytics, even if you already have a log analyzer, I would say: Because Google Analytics will make sense of your measurements so that you can use them to improve your business, whether it’s a product, service, or information business.  ‘Nuff said.