For online marketers, Google Analytics is an indispensable tool. When properly set up, it provides valuable insights that can be used to fine-tune any online advertising efforts. After you customize it for your company, you’ll be able to see where your site’s visitors are coming from, what content they're interested in and whether their visits are converting to sales (or any other desired outcome). If you’re involved in online marketing and haven’t fully implemented Google Analytics on your sites, here’s specific ways you could benefit from the tool.
See Where Visitors Are Coming From
All the traffic your site receives comes from somewhere, and Google Analytics will tell you where it’s coming from. You’ll be able to see whether visitors are coming from referral links, search engines, social platforms, ads or direct URLs. It’ll even further break this information down, so you know precisely which referrals, search terms, social posts, ads and URLs are providing the highest volume, quality traffic, and conversions. You’ll be able to see the effectiveness of each marketing channel you use, so you can focus on the ones providing the best return on investment and adjust the ones underperforming.
See What Visitors Do
From the moment visitors arrive at your site until the time they leave, Google Analytics will monitor their every action. You can find out what pages people visit and how long they spend on each page, as well as what pages turn people away. By monitoring these things, you can change pages with high drop-off rates and duplicate those that show high visitor-engagement rates.
You’ll also be able to see what types of devices visitors are using. You may be surprised by the amount of mobile traffic you receive. Read why you should make your site mobile-friendly.
See Where Visitors Go
In addition to how visitors navigate from one page to the next, you’ll also be able to track their ultimate destination on your site. Specifically, do their visits lead to conversions. After all, even the most effective efforts to attract visitors aren't worthwhile if they don’t lead to customers.
Google Analytics is especially useful for tracking conversions, as almost any type of conversion can be tracked. Whether you want users to visit a specific page, play a video, download a file, fill out a form or make a purchase, analytics can monitor and report any of these actions.
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools available to online marketers, and all of these things can be done with a standard, free account. If you are in digital advertising and not using Google Analytics, implement it today -- sign up and implementation only take a few minutes -- and start seeing new insights as soon as someone visits your website.
