Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a website analytics service that Google provides for free. It gives you insight into the traffic you drive to your website, how users find your website, and where they spend most of their time on your site.

Using this software, you can track the ROI (return of investment) on your ads and promotional campaigns by viewing how many clicks were achieved through each traffic source. This is made easier when you integrate your Ads Accounts and Search Console with your Google Analytics account.

How do you install Google Analytics?

Installation depends on your website but generally, all you need to do is add a few lines of tracking code to each of your web pages.

If you’re using a self-hosted Wordpress site, you simply copy and paste the tracking code into the headers of your web pages, or you can use a plugin to install Google Analytics for you.

If you’re using a hosted ecommerce platform like Shopify, you can set up Google Analytics directly within the Shopify dashboard. Check out this Shopify help center article to learn more.

How does Google Analytics work?

The tracking code you install on your site consists of a few lines of JavaScript that runs inside the internet browsers of your website visitors. This creates a “cookie” in the users’ browsers, which is best described as an anonymous user ID. This is what helps your site keep track of repeat visitors.

The code works with a larger JavaScript file on Google’s servers and makes a note of visitor behaviors, how they found your site, and what they do when they’re there.

What Does Google Analytics Track?

There are a few different categories of information Google Analytics keeps track of:

• Dimensions: Dimensions refer to the location either online or offline, where website visitors came from to visit your site. This may be a region or city, a specific social media site, an ad you’re running, etc.
• Metrics: Metrics are the quantitative measurements for these dimensions. They consider things like the number of sessions and new users you acquire which allows you to measure the success of things like your ad-campaigns. For instance, Facebook might be your dimension, and the number of new users you’ve procured from this platform since launching an ad campaign would be the metric.

It’s also worth noting that Google Analytics also categorizes data into ABCs: Acquisition, Behaviour, and Conversion.

Google Analytics Acquisition Tracking

Acquisition describes how you score your website traffic, such as how viewers arrive at your site. Acquisition reports are a great way to measure which channels drive the most traffic: Social media campaigns, Google Ads, email campaigns, etc.

You’ll also see how much organic search engine traffic reaches your site. The Acquisition report splits up the different sources into categories like unpaid search engine, paid promotion, and referral traffic. That way, you can pinpoint where the majority of your traffic originates from. With this information at your disposal, you can then better direct your time and resources.

Google Analytics Behaviour Tracking

Whereas, Behavior measures what your viewers are doing on your website once they arrive there. The Behaviour tab provides you with information like total page views, individual page views, and the average time spent per page. This includes the bounce rate and the percentage of viewers who exit your web pages.

By looking at these behaviors, you’ll see what kind of content keeps viewers engaged for the longest and more importantly, what makes them lose interest and exit the page. Then you can tweak your website accordingly.

The Behaviour tab also includes a Flow menu that shows what path(s) visitors usually take on your website. It also displays the load speed of your site. If your web pages aren’t performing fast enough, you’ll be able to see that and rectify the issue.

Behavior also highlights your site searches and how viewers use the search functions on your site. If you’re running a website with many different articles or have tons of information, this will show exactly what people are trying to find on your website.

Google Analytics Conversions Tracking

Finally, Conversions track how people convert on your website. This is broken up into different sections to highlight various goals: Ecommerce, multi-channel funnel, and attribution.

You can set up goals for Google Analytics to track conversions. These should reflect the mission of your website. If you run an online shop, for example, you’ll probably want to track purchases.

The multi-channel funnel allows you to keep an eye on the journeys your visitors take to conversion.

Google Analytics also informs you about your audience, giving you essential insights into the types of people most likely to convert. You can see data like their location, language, whether they browse on their mobile or desktop device, their interests, etc.

In summary, you can use Google Analytics to:

• Improve your site’s performance
• Pinpoint weak areas
• And enhance your marketing strategies

Over time, you can use the data to fuel the type of content you publish so that it better resonates with your audience and boosts conversions.

Monitoring your Google Analytic statistics and learning how to interpret them can make you a more efficient content creator and help you improve your SEO. What’s not to love about that?!