Google Analytics - What it is and how to use it

You've probably heard of Google Analytics. But, what the heck is it?

I am a firm believer in making changes based on facts and data. While I sometimes let my "gut instinct" lead the way, I generally like to crunch the numbers. Google Analytics provides a great way to know what is happening with your digital footprint.

Google Analytics is a set of analytical tools for your website.  A small bit of code is inserted into your site and provides all kinds of reporting about how your website is performing. The information available includes:

• How many people visited your website
• How long did these visitors stay
• How many pages they view per visit
• Where in the world did they come from (right down to the city)
• What referral source sent them to your website (direct access, search, social media, email marketing—even the specific campaign!)
• Which pages are receiving the most visits
• How visitors move through your site—page by page by page
• Are your visitors primarily using a desktop or mobile devices?  Which ones?

This is just a small sampling.  Data can be viewed over selected time periods and compared with earlier periods—even these options are very flexible. You can filter the information in many ways.  For example, we recently did a sales campaign and only wanted to see the results of the pages related to the store.  We were able to filter out all other activity.

One important note, Google Analytics doesn't start collecting data until the code is installed on your website. So, if it's not on your website already, this should be a priority to have completed.  Even if you aren't sure you want to use it now, you will likely want to use it down the road and will be happy you have the early data to reference.

All websites that eKamria provides (and most that we work on) have Google Analytics installed and our clients have full access to the reporting.

I'm not going to go through all the steps to open an account or show how to install the code on your website.  There are plenty of examples how to do this already on the web.  And, as I mentioned, eKamria clients likely already have this done for them.

How to access your website's Google Analytics

Most people already have a Gmail account.  And, if you do, you have a Google Account.  (You can have a Google account without using Gmail, but that is for another blog post—maybe!)  

Go to:  https://www.google.com/analytics/:

Click on SIGN IN.  If you aren't already logged into your Google account, you will be asked to log in.  If you are already logged in, you will be presented with a drop-down menu.  Select Analytics and you will be taken to your Google Analytics account.

You are in your Google Analytics account, now what?

Google Home page - Charts available to you "out of the box!"When you first log in, you will be presented with the Google Home page, which contains a number of charts.

While this image is a bit small to see (it's nice and big on the web), we just want to give you an idea how much you can see without doing anything! 

These charts include:

• General information about users
• Users by the time of day
• Real-time active users (Unless you have a huge site, this is usually zero.  But, if you see something there, you can actually watch which pages the users are viewing.)
• Traffic Channel (that is, what is sending people to your website—social media, referrals, etc.?)
• Where in the world is your traffic coming from (you will be surprised to see that the most local of websites still get traffic from around the world—uh, how is your website security?)
• Which pages are being visited
• Active user trends
• Device usage
• User retention

From these charts, you are able to select a number of preset date ranges and even click deeper into the data.

Right from the home page, without doing anything else, you can learn some interesting facts about your website visitors and how they are using your site. It can't get easier than that!

Take some time and explore these charts.  Get acquainted with the data. This just scratches the surface of what Google Analytics can tell you.

Going a little deeper

Once you are comfortable with the charts on the Home page, you are ready to dig a bit deeper. The menu on the left sidebar contains an amazing amount of information for you just by clicking around.  

In the next image, you see the left sidebar navigation menu, and the date selection option on the top right. (For the page to look like this, you need to select something from the left menu.  In this example, we selected Overview from the Behavior option.

Selecting a date range

Google Analytics - Select reports from left sidebar, select date range at topYou will see the date range currently being used for the reports is displayed in the top right corner.  No matter which reports you select, this stays the same until you decide to change it.

To change the date range, click on the small gray arrow to open up your date selection options. You will find the options are pretty extensive and flexible. Go ahead and play with it.  You can do prior period comparisons by checking the box in front of Compare to.  Or, to eliminate any comparison, just remove the check mark.

Selecting reports

This is easy enough. There are a number of report options under Audience, Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions.  And, under those, there are even more options! It can be overwhelming! Under many of the major headings, there is an Overview option.  Try starting there.

What does all this mean?

Data like this is just that, data.  You need to understand what it's telling you and how to use it to turn it into useful, actionable information. 

In upcoming posts, we will continue to dive deeper into this tool.  We will start by explaining some of the terminologies you will see throughout the tool.  We will look at some of the more useful data for almost all users. And, finally, we will look at how you can monitor your online activities to see if you are getting the results you are expecting. 

If you need some help getting this far, feel free to contact us.

Have you used Google Analytics? What kinds of information has been most useful to you? Add to the discussion below!