Analytics can be very confusing and overwhelming. Most business owners recognize the importance of them but easily get bogged down with all the data. Fortunately, it is possible to make them more understandable. To do this, small businesses should start by establishing goals for their analytics.
Just as the above video explains, goals help clarify data. Web Analytics World lists the following as the 10 most popular goals for Google Analytics:
1. Comments
2. Social Bookmarking Actions
3. Newsletter Subscriptions
4. Catalog Requests
5. New Account Openings
6. Feed Subscriptions
7. File Downloads
8. Call Back Requests
9. Leads
10. Sales
Goals will vary from business to business, based upon individual business needs. That said, there are certain metrics that every business should be aware of and track. For starters, all businesses should pay attention to their conversions. By definition, the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action.
By tracking conversions, businesses know what pages are performing, where traffic is coming from, and more. This information helps businesses make improvements, which ultimately, leads to more sales.
Secondly, businesses need to track their referrers. Where are your visitors coming from? It could be that they're coming from Google, Twitter, advertising, and many other places. By knowing this, businesses can apply more time and energy on the areas that are driving the most visitors.
Bounce rate is the third item that all businesses should track. This metric shows how many people leave a site after visiting a single page. A high bounce rate is not what businesses want and could signify that your sight is cluttered or ambiguous.
The fourth item businesses need to know about is abandonment. What causes a visitor to leave? By tracking abandonment, businesses can see where and when the visitor deserted his action.
Lastly, search keywords are another definite item businesses need to track. Because they are conducting very specific queries, the traffic that comes from search engines could be the most valuable visitors that websites receive. These visitors are more likely to action than visitors that just happen to land on a site.
Businesses need to know what keywords send traffic to their site and how they rank for them in order to make necessary improvements.
If businesses apply the information gathered from these basic metrics, they will have a greater understanding for what their visitors want and what improvements they need to make. Are you getting the most out of your analytics?
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Comments
Agree
Really?
Wow.. I didnt know Google Analytics did all that...?
Re: Getting the most out of your analytics
Quite an informative post.
I only hope that Google will take into consideration the diverse level of education, experience etc of users of their tools by simplyfying the way they are put together for easy understanding and use of all.
I Would Add One More
I always gain something from your post Abby, thanks again for another one. I would expand the "search keywords" to include viewing which similar keyword phrases are being used, how many impressions they are getting and review them to determine if your site could compete with on those words. While knowing how well keywords perform for your site is a good tool, knowing where to make a change if needed is the next step.
Re:I Would Add One More
I didn't even know that you
Cotnent for Sports
That's a great list, but one you need to add is: what content are users accessing most. Google Analytics also tracks this. On our college cheerleaders site, we like to track what schools are getting the most activity and bulk up on those pictures and articles.
Re
There aren’t many things you’ll need to improve the data collection from your blog using Google Analytics.
Analytics
If you new to seo than google analytics can help alot.
..and one more..
I agree with every word - perhaps just one thing missing and that is to compare all of the above over time to track improvements (or a decline) in the key factors. Without temporal comparison, it's all just a snap shot and you only get half (or less) of the full picture. We track our analytics month on month as well as quarter on quarter to identify longer term trends.
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