Posted in Marketing | Posted by Impact Partnership

Understanding Google Analytics

Posted on July 21, 2016

Congratulations! You now have an impressive website to point your clients and prospects to when they have questions about you and your services.

Now the question is: Do website visitors feel “at home” on your site, or do they come in the front door (your home page), see something they don’t like, and immediately leave?

There’s a tool (and an app!) to determine what kind of activity is going on behind the scenes. It’s called Google Analytics — and it’s FREE!

Google Analytics is a platform for monitoring traffic and usage of your website. It allows you to view how many users access your site, how long they stayed, and what pages they viewed within a certain period of time. This provides valuable data for marketing and advertising strategies that better align your web presence for your business.

How do I access Google Analytics?

1. Create a Google Account by visiting: https://accounts.google.com/signupwithoutgmail.
2. Check your email for your invitation.
3. Go to google.com/analytics/.
4. Click Sign-In > Google Analytics in the top right.
5. Sign in with the Google Account created in Step 1.
6. Once logged in, click Audience > Overview in the sidebar.

What does all of this information mean?

The terms below are the ones that are most commonly used and what you should be most familiar with:

1. Pages/Visit – The higher, the better!
2. Average Visit Duration – Generally, a visit of 2 minutes or more is great.
3. Bounce Rate – A bounce is when someone looks at one page, then leaves. In most cases, you want to see a Bounce Rate below 50%.

How do I set the time period to track the data I want?

Generally, tracking data over a 30-day period is sufficient. If you are running any sort of campaign via your website, you can adjust accordingly:

1. In the top left, click the date range.
2. Set the dates to the time you’d like to analyze, and click Apply.
3. The view now reflects data for the time period selected. For the graph at the top, you can space the data points out by Hour, Day, Week, and Month.