Expert Guide on Google Analytics and Its Tools

Granted, virtually every marketer today agrees to using Google Analytics for one task or the other. But the truth is, only a few savvy marketers actually understand the gold mine that exists in this free tool and how to correctly use it to grow their business. Hence the need for this expert guide on Google Analytics.

In the right hands, Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can easily transport your brand to the top of the food chain. With the right metrics and information about your audience, any marketer can easily make targeted fail-proof decisions. This is exactly what you get with Google Analytics. No wonder it is the most-used web analytics tool on the planet.

Today, we have decided to simplify the complex world of Google Analytics in this short article. Here, we discuss everything from the definition of Google Analytics, to how it works, its tools, and how you can use it to grow your business.

What is Google Analytics?

Simply put, Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform that allows you to track and analyse vital information about your website and visitors. It provides ‘insider secrets’ into who your audience is, what they want, what you are doing right, and what you are doing wrong. With the right guide on Google Analytics, this information is more than enough to improve your conversion rate and overall sales.

How does it work?

Well, it is not magic. This free tool sure does a lot but it cannot perform magic tricks. You need to embed your unique tracking code into the sites or pages you want tracked. Google Analytics works by tracking vital information of every visitor that clicks on any of the selected pages. As visitors read/view the page, the tracker is busy collecting their device name, age, sex, location, pages visited, time spent on each page, time, interests, etc. These loads of data are converted into visually appealing easy-to-digest charts. With the right tool, you can extract critical marketing information from the data collected, thus helping you make sound decisions about your marketing campaign and brand as a whole.

A quick guide to Google Analytics terms

Google Analytics is a complete world of its own. That’s why it is very easy to get lost there. Here are 12 common terms you will most likely encounter as you get started with Google Analytics.

• Page views: This term refers to the actual number of pages viewed in the chosen time frame.
  
• Landing page: Although typically your homepage, a landing page is in fact any page that visitors see first when they visit your site. It could be any page on your site.
  
• Property: This term refers to the entity being tracked. It could be your selected pages or the complete website. Keep in mind that you can have different properties in one account or a single property for each account.
  
• Keyword: The term keyword is not new for anyone who is into search engine optimisation (SEO). It basically tells you the word or phrase that your visitors were looking for when they landed on your site or page. This is how marketers are able to pinpoint their brand’s keyword. Note that a brand can have a truckload of keywords. You are responsible for sieving through the list to find your top keywords – that is the ones that you rank better with.
  
• Bounce rate: Bounce rate signifies how quickly visitors left. It is typically high in cases where visitors clicked on just one page and left.
  
• Traffic source: As the name implies, this term tells you everything you need to know about where your traffic comes from. This is especially handy when running a marketing campaign because it clearly shows which channel brings the most results.
  
• Organic search: This is a common traffic source for most websites. Visitors who visit your site/page by clicking a link from search engine (e.g Google) result pages are classified as organic search.
  
• Session duration: This is yet another term that calculates time. This is more detailed as it tells you the exact amount of time each visitor spent on your site.
  
• Active users: Active users indicate the number of visitors that are currently on your site or page.
  
• Pages per session: Instead of just telling you the time spent on your site, you can find out how many pages were viewed in that time by checking the metrics for pages per session.
  
• Tracking ID: As we explained earlier, you get to embed a unique code in your selected sites/pages for Google Analytics to work. That unique code is called a Tracking ID.
  
• Conversion: This term signifies the total number of visitors that eventually took the action you wanted. Examples include making a purchase, signing up for your newsletter, booking an appointment, etc.
  

How to grow your business with Google Analytics tools

Learn about your audience

Your business will gain a lot of insight by utilising user behaviour tools. The metrics tell you virtually everything you need to know. You get to learn the specific information that make up your audience as well as their age, sex, interests, time of visit, time spent on each page, sources they came from, and many more. As you have learned from this guide on Google Analytics, you already know this data tells so much more than the audience. They tell what you are doing right, where to invest more resources, and what needs improvement.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is another important way your business can benefit from Google Analytics. It is no news that SEO is the heart of digital marketing. You cannot get ahead of your competitors without growing your SEO game. That is why we recommend using Google Analytics to strengthen your SEO. Some insights from Google Analytics tools come in handy in terms of optimising your website and pages. You can learn how fast your web pages load, how well the mobile version of your website is doing, the keywords to rank for, the channels to focus on, etc.

Maximise marketing campaigns

Savvy marketers use Google Analytics to maximise returns from marketing campaigns. Since the free analytics tools give insight into users’ behaviour and activities, these data can be used to decide the products to promote, the keyword to use, the channel to employ, the location to select, the gender to advertise to, etc. All of these metrics are very critical to your campaign performance. You could have the right product and still have no conversion if you are advertising to the wrong audience.

Track conversion rate

This is yet another incredible lesson you can pick from our guide on Google analytics tools. In addition to tracking your audience and how they interact with your business, Google Analytics allows you to track how many people make it through the sales funnel. In fact, you can also tell where people stopped in the sales funnel, helping you identify what went wrong and how to improve their experience next time so that they can eventually finish the cycle.

Predict the future

Do you know you can predict the future? No, not the upcoming match or what you will be in the next decade. Until we can actually predict the future, Google Analytics has empowered marketers with the ability to make informed decisions about the future of their brands. The predictive analytics tools coupled with user behaviour help you predict (to the highest possible certainty) what the future holds for your firm. This is a highly welcomed development as it opens doors to endless opportunities for marketers/business owners.

Google Analytics is undoubtedly the most advanced web analytics platform on the planet. The insights are top-notch and the tools are constantly improving. This makes it worth every marketer’s time and effort. Whether you are a seasoned marketer or a beginner, we assure you that you will find this guide on Google Analytics very helpful.

For professional assistance, don’t hesitate to contact FOME. We are here to help!