I was recently working with a client and recommended (as I do to pretty much everyone) that they sign up for Google Analytics. If you are a small to medium (and even large) business with a website and don’t have Google Analytics setup – well, get it setup!
If you don’t know what it does, Google Analytics provides a free service that gives you lots of information about the traffic on your website. Google Analytics is free, easy to setup, and easy to use. If you don’t have it setup and would like it setup, put a comment on this blog that you would like to be contacted about getting Google Analytics setup on your site (many software packages have integration with Google so it will take 10 mins, and some don’t and it might take an hour or two).
How do I start?
It’s very simple to sign up for an account, go to: http://www.google.com/analytics/
With everything Google does, they do everything they can to help make it very easy. One “technical” step that Google just can’t do for you, is to insert a bit of code into each of your pages (done via templates if you have a CMS). So, if you had someone develop your website and you’re not comfortable messing with the site, just have your webmaster, developer a call. It really shouldn’t take them long, and really, should have been part of your site build.
Once you log in you’re presented with the Dashboard, it contains all the basic information about the traffic to your website.
Visits: The total amount of people that came to your Web site during the reporting period.
Pageviews: The total number of Web pages on your site that were viewed during the reporting period. If a person comes to your Web site and visits 10 pages, it will count as 10 pageviews.
Pages/Visit: The average number of pages each visitor went to during their visit. It’s simply the Pageviews divided by the Visits.
Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of people that visited your Web site and then left right away, without viewing any other pages.
Avg. Time on Site: The average time each visitor spent on your Web site.
% New Visits: The percentage of visitors that came to your Web site for the first time.
Map Overlay: This map shows you where your visitors are coming from geographically.
Traffic Sources: This area tells you where your website traffic is coming from, if you consistently get traffic from referring websites, search engines, or direct traffic. For example, this website refers to my company website, so when I view the Traffic report for Kindred, this site comes up as a referrer website.
Just viewing the Dashboard and the few reports (click thru – check them out) gives you lots of information that is useful. Most people are surprised where their traffic is coming from and where it heads on their site. Drilling in further provides a wealth of information about how you can better optimize your site to convert visitors into customers, which will be part of a future blog.
