Google Analytics Tutorial

Google® Analytics, like most analytics tools, is an intimidating tool to learn. However, it's crucial to the success of your marketing campaigns, both online and off. Before you login to your Google® Analytics account, let's quickly go over what it is, and how it works.

What it is

Google® Analytics is informational only. You use it only to view traffic (visitors) to your website, how they get there, and what they do when they get there. This information is priceless in determining your ongoing marketing strategies. You can know exactly which campaigns are yielding the highest results, and what pages on your site are working or not working for your customers.

Installation

If we developed your site for you, you probably already have it installed. If not, go to http://www.google.com/analytics and go through the process of setting up your site. When you're done, you'll have a little piece of JavaScript code to paste into the body of every page on your site (or once in your site's template if using a Web Management Platform like Txtur™).

Viewing Reports

Log in to your Google™ Analytics account here » using your Google™ account associated with your Google™ Analytics profile. Once logged in, if you have multiple Google™ Analytics accounts, you'll have to select the appropriate account from the drop-down menu at the top right labeled "My Analytics Accounts". Each "account" can contain multiple website "profiles". Each of our clients has a separate account, with some including multiple website profiles to track site performance separately. Once you've selected the appropriate "account", you'll see your website(s) listed on the page in the "website profiles" table. To get started, just click the "View Reports" link in the row of the site you want to check.

Viewing Relevant Data

You should now be on the "Dashboard" page of Google™ Analytics. At the top of your page, you'll see raw traffic information; how many users have visited your site over a period of time. The default range is about 30 days, but you can edit that by clicking on the down arrow near the date range box at the top right-hand side of the screen. Go ahead, try it.

Traffic Sources

You want to know more than how many people visited your site though; you want to know where they came from. If you scroll down about halfway on the dashboard page, you'll see a pie chart detailing your "traffic sources". The pie chart should at least represent the following sources: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, and Search Engines. It will tell you actual numbers of visitors, as well as the percentage of overall traffic for whatever date range you've specified. Want more detailed information? Click the "view report" link at the bottom of the "Traffic Sources Overview" box. This will take you to the "Traffic Sources Overvie" page. You can view full reports on traffic sources, as well as keywords that people are using to search for and find your site. If you click on any of the traffic sources (eg. "Google (organic)"), you'll be taken to a page with more detailed information about that source. From this page, you can cross-reference, or "segment" information with other data collected from your site's users, such as geographic location, language, what browser they're using, what their screen size is, and other data.

Site Content

To see what content on your site is most popular, click the "Content" link on the left-hand side of your screen. This page works the same as the "Traffic Sources Overview" page, but instead shows what pages on your site people are looking at, what pages they're entering the site through (landing or entrance page), and what pages they exit your site on (exit pages).

Goals

If your site has a clear objective, such as completion of a transaction or submittal of a quote request, you can set it up as a goal in Analytics. This allows you to see what percentage of your site's visitors actually performed your desired action when they visited. You can also segment this based on traffic source and content path. If you already have goals set up, you can view conversion information by clicking the "Goals" link on the left-hand side. This will take you to a page similar to the "Traffic Sources Overview" page and "Content Overview" page. Notice that when you click "Goals", more options appear on the left-hand side underneath the "Goals" link. Feel free to explore; you won't break anything.

Leave a comment if I left anything out!

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