Why should you care?
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.
