Web Site Analytics Part 2
Posted by Mary Gammel on August 3, 2009 under Web Analytics | 
Be the First to Comment
There are many tools you can use to monitor your website’s traffic and usage. This month I’ll share some basics on the free Google Analytics tool. While you’re reading keep in mind that Google Analytics is very powerful and this article just scratches the surface.
How does Google Analytics work?
Google Analytics works by running a script behind the scenes on each page of a website. This script collects the data and sends it to Google to be stored in your account. In order to use Google Analytics on your site, you must install programming code to call the script into each web page.
To view the analytics data collected by the Google Analytics script, you log into your Google Analytics account and use their dashboard to look at different statistics over different periods of time. You can also have reports automatically emailed to you periodically (monthly, quarterly, etc).
Are there some websites that can’t use Google Analytics?
In some cases such as when using a content management system, a web site hosting service may not allow you to access the code of your web site to install external programs. To determine this, check with a web site consultant or your hosting provider. There may be an alternative to Google Analytics that is allowed.
What types of reports does Google Analytics provide?
In addition to custom and ad campaign tracking reports, Google Analytics provides many standard reports as part of it’s dashboard:
- Visitors: Map overlay, new vs. returning, languages, visitor trending, visitor loyalty, browser capabilities, network properties
- Traffic Sources: direct traffic, referring sites, search engines, keywords
- Content: top content, content by title, landing pages, exit pages
How can Google Analytics data be used to improve website traffic?
Google Analytics can be used to determine trends over time. For example:
- The analytics data indicates that visitors are landing on an unexpected page of your web site, but they leave right away. In that case, maybe changing the content on that page to meet the visitors needs is in order.
- The data shows that visitors reaching the site via search engine referrals are typing in certain keyword phrases. Maybe you can optimize pages on your site to target other phrases to get a different set of visitors.
- After changing a feature on your web site, analytics can help you determine if that feature increases or decreases traffic.
- Google Analytics can also be used to track campaigns such as pay-per-click and Google AdWords.
Related Links
Google Analytics: A Quick Guide to the Basics
Google Analytics 101: Some Basic Setup Tips
7 Google Analytics Filters To Help Understand Your Visitors
Quick Tip:
In order to setup Google Analytics on your website, you’ll need to do some prep work. First, find out if your site is compatible with Google Analytics. Then make sure you have access to update the source code of your website to insert the Google Analytics code.
Did you know?
Quality Web Site Testing can help website owners and designers setup Google Analytics on compatible websites. We’ll set up custom reports to get the data you need and even provide analysis of the reports on the periodic basis to help you spot visitor trends. Contact us at Quality Web Site Testing for your free consultation and estimate.
More information on Web Site Analytics can be found in Part 1 of this article.
Add A Comment