What are Google Analytics and why does my website need to be connected to it?

If your business doesn’t have a dedicated marketing person making sure you’re getting maximum effectiveness from your website, it’s time to get one or get clued up on how to do it yourself.
​
Google Analytics can deliver important insights about the performance of your website and will allow you to make refinements to your site and ultimately get more visitors and customers flowing your way.

The word analytics may sound a bit daunting and technical, but the good news is that Google have made it easy to connect and set-up. However, many small and medium sized businesses don’t take this simple step towards understanding the figures generated by their site. It’s a process that can be undertaken by anyone, but if you feel its beyond your capabilities there are plenty of people, like us, who can help you.

A bonus of tool is that it’s totally free to use. It’s often the case that free software comes with a price tag somewhere down the line, but on this rare occasion Google Analytics doesn’t. This powerful tool will enable you to learn all kinds of fascinating insights, for absolutely nothing.

Once you’ve installed it, it will allow you to see a detailed analysis of the visitors to your website and where they come from. It will also reveal what they look at, how long they stay, your most popular content, what sort of device they’re using, even age, gender and their likes & dislikes. Importantly too it will show you the “bounce rate”, which is the number of people who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page.

What's the bounce rate of your website?

Consider for a moment the “bounce rate”. If your data is showing you that a high number of visitors are leaving after only viewing the home page, for example, you may come to the conclusion that your home page is not delivering the information visitors want. As a result, you should review the content on that page and take time to consider how it could improve.
​
Think also about how you could combine that “bounce rate” information with the knowledge of where those lost customers have come from. Imagine if your business is in Brentwood, but lots of the visitors who “bounce” from your site are from Romford; what could you change on the site and in your business to turn all those disappearing Romford visitors into customers?

For owners of small and medium sized businesses this is super exciting business information which, in a nutshell, tells you if your website is working for you or not.

Other great insights include the ability to track the effectiveness of targeted social media campaigns. It will allow you to see which links have been clicked on to reach your site. You can even see which “keywords” are working for you and those that are not. Again, this is vital information that will help you to improve the use of “keywords” on the site.

Google Analytics data is seen in an easy to read dashboard, which you then drill down into to get more detailed information. One of the few disadvantages is that there is so much potential information to see, it can become very time consuming. As a result, it’s worthwhile setting up Custom Reports and specific site Goals right at the start, so you go straight to the information that you’ll need.
​
This blog only mentions a few of the brilliant business insights it can deliver. Why not give it a go and come back to let us know how you got on.