A Beginners Guide To Google Analytics

14 June 2021

Google Analytics is a powerful and completely free tool that businesses can use to collect a thorough data set about their PPC advertising results and website use. They offer up to and over 200 metrics that allow you a full picture of your marketing approach, from conception and acquisition all the way to end-level conversions.

The data you collect here will help you become a more informed business, allowing you to make evidence-based and statistically relevant deliberations regarding your forward strategy.

In this post, we’ll discuss a few concepts that beginners to Google Analytics should know, why it matters, and how to integrate it into your online approach.

 

What are Google Analytics?

Google Analytics serves as a tool businesses use to track their real-time data, and audience metrics, as well as acquisition, behavior, and conversion metrics regarding their PPC advertising and website performance.

They help you identify the trends of users visiting your website and also how they use it, which enables you to assess just how effective your website may be, what functions are being used most, and where inconsistencies in your approach lie.

They are recorded as two forms of data set, namely dimensions and metrics.

Dimensions data offers demographic information such as where your users are visiting from, their ages, and what device they were using. Metrics offer variable and qualitative data, such as how long your pages were used for, who visited them, and which were loaded in the first place.

Google Analytics also tracks further data, such as the sessions performed on your site within a given span of time, the average time on your page, how many views you have received, and bounce rate (this serves as how many people visit your website and leave without taking an action).

 

Why do they matter?

When developing a competitive online approach, you need to have data to hand to assess just how you’re performing, and if shifts in your strategy are working for better or for worse.

You can also enhance measures to heighten conversions, that is the success ratio of organic traffic finding your website and engaging in an action on your website, such as purchasing a product. This can help you designate the layout of your website, which landing pages are working, and if your SEO efforts are being localized to the audience you hope to reach.

In other words, Google Analytics serves as a valuable data set for you to utilize in all aspects, and must inform your online strategy going forward.

 

How can you integrate Google Analytics to your website?

Google Analytics is totally free, meaning that integrating these metrics on your website is as simple as signing into an account online and setting up a property in your Analytics account (this being your website or particular app).

From there, you can set up reporting views that gauge the performance of your property, including filtered perspectives of your data. With a simple tracking code on your website, you can ascertain data no matter how many web pages you have.

With this approach, you’re sure to start making more informed decisions regarding your online strategy.