Google Analytics is a cloud-based analytical tool that measures and reports website traffic. It helps us to analyze visitor traffic and paints a complete picture of our website’s audience and their needs. It gives actionable insights into how visitors find and use your site, and how to keep them coming back. It provides statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes.
“Google Analytics helped us optimize our art marketplace, resulting in 400% year-over-year revenue growth for our art business.”- Mariam Naficy, Founder & CEO, Minted.
It is the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. Google Analytics (many of the services) is a free Google product.
It generates detailed statistics about:
- A website’s traffic (visits, unique visitors, page views, avg. visit duration, bounce rate etc.), visit the location, device used etc.
- Traffic source (search engine or referrer) & medium (paid or organic)
- Measures conversions (sign ups, form fills etc.)
- Measures Sales (for e-commerce websites)
Main Features of Google Analytics
- Built-In reports, Dashboards
- Real-time analytics
- Advanced: Custom reports, Cohort analysis, Goal-flow charts, custom dimensions & custom metrics
How to use Google Analytics?
- Sign in to Google Analytics with your Google account
- Click the Admin button on the bottom left sidebar of your dashboard
- Select an account or create an account
- Click on the drop-down menu to create a property
- Click on Website and add your site’s name and URL
- Choose your industry
- Choose your time zone
- Click on Get Tracking ID
- Install Tracking ID on your website
How does it work?
Google Analytics works by means of a small <script> tracking code. The tracking code must be on every page you wish to track. Copy and paste the code directly into your website template.
- The tracking code contains a unique ID that corresponds to each Google Analytics property.
- This code snippet activates Google Analytics tracking for your site, which collects and sends visitor activity to your Google Analytics account.
- Google also uses sampling in its reports rather than analyzing all available data.
Major Benefits of Google Analytics
- Analyze sources of traffic
- Able to find out how your visitors locate your website
- Able to identify which pages and links your visitors click the most
- Visitor segmentation
- Able to fine tune your website
- Information about visitors
- Specific page popularity
- Website bounce rates
- Traffic flow
- Review historical data
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