Once you have had your website designed you will want to have Google Analytics installed for your web master to use. But what is it and why should you use it?
Google Analytics is a free service from Google that gives you valuable information about the performance of your website and what your customers get up to once they are on your website. You can use this information to monitor the website\’s performance and see what to keep the same and what to change. You can also see where people are coming from in order to spot new opportunities.
How people find your site
You are probably running some form of SEO, social media or pay per click campaigns in order to drive traffic to your website. With Google Analytics you can see where website traffic has come from, if it is from the search engines, a social media site or through paid campaigns. This will give you a clue as to the success of a campaign and can help you to make improvements and save money. Not every campaign will be a success so you do not want to throw money at something that isn\’t working for longer than you have to.
Where people leave your site
Google Analytics gives you very clear information about what page people are on when they leave your site. If it is the contact page, or order confirmed page, then this is good news. Your site is working well as people have either just bought something or they have got your contact details and are going to give you a call. However, if they leave your site on a certain product page or the home page then something is putting them off and they do not want to look further.
It could be that they were led to your website under false pretences, if you have got your keywords wrong or you have something misleading in a social media campaign, or it could be something on site that is off putting. It could be a spelling error, your site might be slow to load, or it could be the design and ease-of-use of your website is not up to scratch.
Where people go on your site
Google Analytics will show you clearly the routes that people take around you website and can give you clear indications about how easy your website is to use. People should be able to navigate straight to where they want to go and not get lost or make several backwards steps to find the information that they require.
This is just the basic information available to you. There are many more advanced options in Google Analytics to help you refine your website and campaigns. But without Google Analytics you could miss something obvious and waste money.