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Understanding Google Analytics

Posted October 8, 2008 By Nick Weynand |

Google Analytics has quickly become the statistics package of choice for many Web site owners. Why? Mostly because it’s free, but also because it’s easy to sign up for, easy to install and very easy to understand.

Most people can understand what they are looking at right away. However, Google Analytics has many advanced features that are difficult to uncover but are often the most useful. In this brief article, I’ll walk you through the basics of Google Analytics and then help you understand some of the more advanced features.

If you’re a current client, I’ll offer to install Google Analytics for free on your Web site. Just sign up for an account then drop me an email at nick@trademarkmedia.com.

Getting started with Google Analytics

If you’ve decided that you want to give Google Analytics a try, the first step is registering. Simply visit http://www.google.com/analytics and sign up for an account. Google makes it easy to sign up by walking you through the process. One of the final steps is to copy and paste the tracking code into your Web page template. This may be something you need your webmaster to take care of if you don’t feel comfortable jumping into the HTML code.

Understanding the basics

When you first log in, you’ll see the Google Analytics dashboard. This contains an overview of your Web site traffic:

The top portion will display the total visits on your Web site, per day, over the last month. The second section displays some key statistics:

• Visits: The total amount of people that came to your Web site during the reporting period.
• Pageviews: The total number of Web pages on your site that were viewed during the reporting period. If a person comes to your Web site and visits 10 pages, it will count as 10 pageviews.
• Pages/Visit: The average number of pages each visitor went to during their visit. It’s simply the Pageviews divided by the Visits.
• Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of people that visited your Web site and then left right away, without viewing any other pages.
• Avg. Time on Site: The average time each visitor spent on your Web site.
• % New Visits: The percentage of visitors that came to your Web site for the first time.

Also displayed on the dashboard are some other key statistics including where your visitors are coming from geographically, what the source of your traffic is (whether people are visiting from search engines or typing your Web site in directly) and what pages on your site are viewed the most.

Click on each one of these reports  to get more detailed information about the area that you’re interested in.

Important advanced features

Once you have the basics down, you’ll want to dig a little deeper into some of the advanced features that Google Analytics has to offer.

Goals

Your Web site should allow your visitors to accomplish something. Think about what you want your users to do when they visit your site. It could be making an online donation, purchasing a product, filling out a quote request form or viewing a document library. Whatever your goals are, they should be measurable and Google Analytics will help you track them.

To set up a goal, click on Analytics Settings at the top of the page, then click on Edit next to the profile you want to set up goals for. The second section on the next page will be called Conversion Goals and Funnel. Set up your goals here by clicking on Edit next to an empty goal slot and following the instructions.

After your goals have been established, you can track them by clicking on the Goals option from the dashboard. The number that you’ll be most interested in is conversion rate. This is simply the percentage of visitors that came to your site and then completed one of your goals. Knowing this number will allow you to tweak your site in order to make your conversion rate go up.

Site Search

If your Web site doesn’t have a built-in search function, you may want to give the Google site search a try. It easy to set up and install (though you may have to ask your webmaster to deal with the HTML part) and it integrates with Google Analytics.
Why is the site search important? Visitors will use a site search when they don’t immediately find what they are looking for. Knowing what visitors are searching for is important. If you notice that hundreds of visitors are searching for “jobs” on your Web site, it means that information about jobs is important and not readily available. This will allow you to make information about jobs easier to find, therefore giving your visitors a better experience.

AdWords

Google AdWords is a program that allows you to pay for your placement on Google’s search results page. If you want more information on this program, check out this article on SEO. If you have a Google AdWords account established, you can integrate it with your Google Analytics account. This will allow you to view reports on how much traffic is coming from your Google AdWords advertisements and how much is coming from other sources. Knowing this will allow you to make informed decisions about how much money to put toward search engine advertising.

Site Overlay

Site Overlay is a useful feature found under the Content section. Clicking this report will launch an image of your Web site home page, with statistics on where users are clicking on the page. This is useful information if you care about how your home page is laid out. Perhaps something that you thought really stood out is being ignored by most visitors. Knowing this will allow you to make small changes to the layout of your home page in order to do a better job of directing visitors’ actions.

These are just a few of the advanced features that Google Analytics offers. Using this powerful tool to its fullest extent will allow you to make informed decisions about your Web site. So if you can afford free, jump in and give Google Analytics a try.

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