If you are a marketer or someone managing a website, you should be using Google Analytics. It’s a no brainer. But it can also be pretty overwhelming to dig through all that data, especially if you’re new to the platform.

For the newbies out there, Google Analytics is a powerful set of tools that helps you analyze the data and metrics related to visitor activities on your website. It provides businesses deeper insight into the flow of traffic, visitors coming to the website, their behavioral pattern(s), and a wide range of other crucial information that can enable more informed decision-making capabilities.

There are several web analytics providers, but Analytics, like any other Google product, stands out in a crowd. The free analytics service provides website owners a wealth of information regarding the source of traffic, the popularity of a webpage, historical data of visitors, and a flood of other data related to your website.

What’s Special About Google Analytics?

Google's analytics services can deliver critical data about pages that are frequently visited by users, enabling enterprises to customize the content for pages that are considered relevant by the viewers. The integration of engaging content into popular pages prolongs a visitor's stay on the site, significantly increasing the scope of lead conversion.

The most-used analytics services also display key statistics about the flow of traffic, giving businesses with vital information that enables them to modify the architecture of their website depending on the traffic flow. Statistical figures about the flow of traffic essentially help determine the bounce rate for pages, allowing companies to optimize the pages that are failing to engage visitors. Traffic flow stats are also a crucial indicator of which pages are rarely visited, and those that are prioritized by users.

Important Google Analytics Metrics

Users are often confused as to which metrics to look at, especially if they have no prior experience with Analytics. If that’s you, here are some basic metrics you should pay attention to.

  1. Mobile Traffic - Now that Google is stressing on mobile sites in its search engine index, businesses should make use of Google Analytics to track the volume and engagement of mobile visits in order to improve the ranking of their website in Google search.
  2. Site Speed - Site speed has become an important ranking factor in recent times, as Google is pushing slow-loading websites down in its search results. The site speed is a key metric to look at using Google Analytics, as sluggish websites not only affect user experiences but also reduce visibility in search.
  3. Bounce Rate – Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of visitors who enter your site and immediately leave. This “bounce” metric tells you which page they bounced from, and can offer insight into the pages you should improve. A bounce rate percentage at or below 50% is good, but at or below 25% is even better.
  4. Conversion Tracking - Syncing all Google products like YouTube and AdWords and setting up Google Analytics conversion tracking can help marketers effectively determine the performance of paid and unpaid campaigns.
  5. Search Console - Google Analytics search console provides the all-important information about what users see on Google search page before they go to a website. Being able to analyze which pages rank alongside the conversion rate metrics is immensely valuable for website owners.
  6. Benchmarking - Google Analytics can display the performance of a website’s content as compared to the content of other companies based on aggregated industry data. Organizations can also compare their website’s performance by social channels, geographical locations, devices, and flow of traffic. Benchmarking gives you a comparison of your site to relevant competitors.
  7. Demographics - Enabling Google Analytics ‘Advertising Reporting’ feature can provide critical information about visitor demographics, including their age, gender, interests, and purchasing activities.
  8. Frequency & Recency - The Frequency & Recency metric allows businesses to see how many times users visit their site, and also the interval between the visits. This is particularly helpful to understand how many visits it takes a user to convert into a customer.
  9. New vs. Returning Report – This displays how well the site’s content is performing in terms of bringing visitors back. Returning visitors often end up being loyal customers, so this metric is important to pay attention to.

How Data from Google Analytics Can Guide Your Marketing Campaigns

Let’s discuss three scenarios to understand how enterprises can leverage Google Analytics to shape their marketing and advertising campaigns. 

Scenario #1 - Traffic Sources

Google Analytics can accurately tell enterprises how users are driven to their website. For instance, whether visitors are coming from search engines, referral links, via paid advertisements, or from organic searches. Knowing this helps businesses efficiently identify the sources that are boosting the traffic.

Scenario #2 - Visitor Information

Google Analytics offers in-depth information about the users visiting a website. Companies can see the countries, states and cities from where their website is being regularly accessed, allowing them to strategize campaigns with content tailored for people residing in those areas. This enhances visitor experiences, heightens engagement, and increases visitor stay on the website.

Scenario #3 - Historical Data

The historical data obtained from Google Analytics can empower companies with crucial information that help ascertain trends and changes in visitor behavioral patterns across different periods of time. Understanding these trends can be extremely useful in strategizing marketing campaigns, or designing products and services that draw greater interest during a specific time of the month or year.

Google Analytics also provides a host of other services like social reporting and revenue tracking, subdomain management, outbound links, email reports, and search statistics. Clearly, this is one extraordinary tool that every marketer and website owner must have in their repertoire to run effective marketing campaigns and increase their online presence.

Don’t know if your site is tracking data with Google Analytics? We can help you get started on the platform and provide some insight into ways to improve your website for your visitors. To quickly learn if your site is utilizing Google Analytics, request a complimentary Digital Footprint SEO Audit, or contact our team.

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