If you’ve been getting in to doing digital marketing for your business, then you’ve probably come across something called Google Analytics.
You might be wondering “what is Google Analytics” - well wonder no more!
In this article - part of my Digital Marketing FAQs series - I’m going to give you a quick run down on what Google Analytics is and how it works.
Basically, Google Analytics is a platform for tracking the performance of your website.
With Google Analytics you are able to see useful metrics like:
- How many people visited your site in any given time period
- Where they came from (both geographically and in terms of the “channel” - like social media - that drove them to your site)
- What pages and content they view
- How long they spend on your site
- What browsers and devices they use
- Plus a whole lot more
The best part about Google Analytics?
It’s totally free!
There is a premium version of Google Analytics available, but this is aimed squarely at large organisations with complex data requirements. For “normal” businesses, the free version of Google Analytics will more than suffice.
As far as setting up Google Analytics goes, the process is quite straightforward.
Firstly, you register an account (you'll need a Google account - gmail or Google Apps - to be able to do this).
You'll then be given a small code snippet to install on your site.
After that, the basic setup process is done!
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Why Is Google Analytics So Important?
You might be wondering why you actually need Google Analytics. After all, if you use a CMS platform like Weebly or Squarespace, they come with their own in built stats tracking.
There are a few reasons, however, why you might want to use Google Analytics and why it is so important:
- Google Analytics is more accurate - Internal reporting dashboards in CMS tools like Weebly or Squarespace are generally not that accurate (at least compared to Google Analytics).
- It is the “industry standard” - This is important if you ever plan on hiring a digital marketing consultant or bringing in an in-house marketing employee. They will expect to see Google Analytics data and it cannot be applied retroactively.
- It provides more options and reporting - Generally CMS reporting will just be basic info like the number of page views and most visited pages. Google Analytics simply provides so much more juicy data that can be used to analyse and inform your marketing!
As you can see, Google Analytics is an essential and very useful tool in your digital marketing arsenal.
If you don’t have it set up yet, then contact me to day and I’ll help you get set up! Depending on the platform your website is built on, it can take just a few minutes to create a free Google Analytics account and install the required code.