Google Analytics is a free service for collecting and analysing website traffic statistics. Many webmasters see no difficulty in using it, since it's set up by simply installing a snippet on the website's pages. But it's not as simple as it seems at first glance.
Why you need Google Analytics
First, let's look at why you need Google Analytics. The service collects up-to-date data on the number of unique users who visited the site in a day or a given period. Beyond that, it includes more than 100 in-depth and advanced parameters for analysis. Counting visitors is just the tip of the iceberg.
Google Analytics has two main tools: metrics and dimensions. Metrics show overall numbers: the number of visitors, time spent on pages, click-through and bounce rates and more. Dimensions provide deeper data: users' location, age and the device they use to visit the site. All of this data is combined into a single table that you can expand or narrow down. Based on it, SEO specialists and marketers carry out SEO optimisation and create ad campaigns.
The service has a huge number of measurements (more than 300), but they fall into two large groups:
- Traffic sources: this data helps analyse incoming traffic by counting users and other values;
- Behavioural factors: these values help analyse how engaged users are with the site's content (how long each user spent on pages, what they clicked, how far they read an article and so on).
Conversion (expressed as ROI) is calculated from these two groups. It's the main criterion reflecting traffic quality and response rate. After all, the main goal of any website is to attract an audience and get it to take action (for example, read an article to the end, request a callback, buy a product or order a service).
How Google Analytics measures website traffic
Without Google Analytics, it would be impossible to assess the quality of incoming traffic. Beginners may find it hard to take in all the information at once, so here are a few key traffic metrics:
- the number of unique visitors for the whole site or individual pages;
- a traffic description (location by IP, age, device type, engagement depth);
- bounce rate (how many users closed the page right after opening it);
- returns (how many times users went back to the previous page).
Based on this information, Google itself determines how interested the audience is in the site's content. If the bounce rate is low and pages per session are high, the site will rank higher in search results. This helps make content more interesting and valuable for users.
What else you can learn from Google Analytics
The tool from the world's best-known search engine isn't just dry numbers. Its reports reveal many interesting details:
- how quickly pages load on mobile devices and computers;
- which platforms visitors most often come from (for example, iOS or Android, Windows or macOS);
- the conversion rate achieved on the site (for example, the ratio of visitors to buyers in an online store);
- how effective your search advertising campaigns are.
How to set up Google Analytics on a website
To set it up, a special JavaScript code is installed on the site. After that, all incoming data is automatically recorded and sent to the dashboard in a structured form.
You can get the code at google.com/analytics. You'll need to create a new account and name the property so you don't get confused later. Note that you can connect several websites to one account. Then you start working with the site itself: enter the URL, industry and time zone. The process is complete when you click "Get tracking ID". That's the ID of the new tag you need to add to your site.
Now you know the main features of Google Analytics, which will help you understand the basics of this important tool. But don't try to set it up yourself if you don't have the experience. It's best to leave it to the specialists at CYBORG.
