Google Analytics is a great tool that will allow you to better understand your website traffic.
Whether you run a business, a news site, or a personal blog, Google Analytics will be beneficial to gathering visitor insights and making data-backed decisions.
What Is Google Analytics
The Google Analytics tracking code is a snippet of code you place on your website.
The code allows you to track website visitors and the actions they take while on your site.
It is an extremely beneficial tool that you should implement today, if you haven’t already done so.
The Benefits Of Using Google Analytics
Okay, so Google Analytics allows you to track your website visitors – but what exactly does this mean?
Let’s discuss the many different Google Analytics benefits and why you should install the tracking code on your website today.
1. Free
First off, Google Analytics is a free tool.
For the amount of data and insights that it provides you with, taking advantage of the tool is a no-brainer.
2. Simple To Install
It is also extremely simple to install.
Simply copy your tracking code and paste it into the header of your website.
You can learn how to do so for WordPress and other websites here:
3. Set Goals
With Google Analytics, you can set website goals.
Anything from contact form fills, a scheduled call, a landing page view – you name it.
Simply set up your most important business objectives as goals in Google Analytics, and track them week over week, month over month, etc.
4. Optimize Your Website According To Real Metrics
Now that you have access to your website metrics, you can now make business decisions based on real data.
This is extremely lucrative, as you no longer have to make blind decisions based on assumptions – the data is right there in front of you!
5. View Real-time Visitors
You can view real-time visitors on your website.
Meaning, visitors that are on your website at that very moment.
This includes their location, how they got to your website, what page they’re on, etc.
6. Most Popular Pages With Metrics
Discover which of your pages are most popular.
By understanding the pages your visitors are visiting most, you can then begin optimizing and focusing on these pages to drive action.
7. Bounce Rate
This tells you who lands on your website and leaves before ever visiting another page.
A high bounce rate can signal a low website loading speed or poor page content.
A low bounce rate means you have a very engaged audience.
8. Average Time On Page
For each specific webpage, discover how long each visitor stays on each page on average.
9. Session Duration
This differs from average time on page because it measures the average time a visitor spends on your entire website as a whole.
10. Users
One of the other great benefits of Google Analytics for business is that you can learn how many users visit your website each day, week, month and year.
See what days of the week drive the most traffic, and what times of the day produce the most visitors.
11. Age
Another benefit of Google Analytics is that it shows your different site demographics.
It even has an age metric, which shows you the ages of the users that have visited your website.
12. Gender
Another demographic it can show you is gender.
It will measure the percentage of your website traffic that is male, and the percentage of your website traffic that is female.
13. Interests
Learn what your audience is interested in based on affinity category and in-market segments.
This categorizes your audience into segments based on the websites they’ve visited in the past, their behaviour and actions, and more.
This is based on Google’s past knowledge of these users.
14. Country
Google Analytics also allows you to see the country your users are coming from, and breaks down into percentages what users are coming from where.
15. City
It even gets more granular with the ability to track users by city.
16. New And Loyal/Returning Users
Discover how much of your website traffic is from completely new visitors, or loyal visitors that are returning to your website again.
17. Levels Of Engagement
See how engaged your users are by bucketing them into groups based on the number of seconds they were on your website.
This is another way to visually understand your users.
18. Technology Used
Learn what browser your visitors are using and what network they’re with.
This section will show you whether they use Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, and are with Rogers, Sympatico, or Bell.
19. Desktop Vs. Mobile Vs. Tablet
This shows you what percentage of users come a mobile phone, a desktop computer, or a tablet.
Digging into these analytics can tell you if there is a problem with your website on any one of these devices.
20. Devices
This will tell you the actual device your visitors are using, whether it be a Google Nexus 5, an iPhone 8 Plus, a Samsung Galaxy S9+, etc.
21. Acquisition Channels
This is another Google Analytics benefit that shows you where your traffic actually comes from.
It is broken down into direct, organic search, paid search, social, referral, and more.
22. Source/Medium
The Source describes precisely where your visitors came from, and the Medium describes how they go to your website.
For example: if a visitor came from “google/organic”, this tells you that this particular visitor found your website through organic Google Search.
23. Google Ads Metrics
If you run Google Ads, you can link your Google Ads account to Google Analytics.
This will show all of your Google Ads metrics including your accounts, campaigns, keywords, bids, display targeting, and more.
It is very convenient to have the ability to view all of this data under one tool.
24. Organic Search Queries
Discover the search queries that are typed into Google which generate impressions and clicks for your website.
Here, you can also view the average positions and click through rates (CTR) of these keywords.
25. Top Organic Landing Pages
Learn which landing pages generate the most clicks from Google Search.
See what pages your visitors from Google are landing on, and where they go from there.
26. Site Search
If you have a particularly large site, then the site search section will show you exactly what keywords are typed into the search box on your site.
If many users are searching the same thing, then maybe you need to redesign your website so they can more easily find the specific thing they are looking for.
27. User Management
You can also manage the users that have access to your Google Analytics account.
Along with this, you can set the permissions for which you would like to grant them with – owner, manager, editor, etc.
This will allow you to work with many vendors at once, without compromising sensitive, proprietary website data.
28. Link Data To Other Apps
Google Analytics can also link with other apps such as Google Ads, Google Search Console, AdSense, BigQuery, and more.
Sharing data across platforms will allow all apps to function more effectively.
29. Filter IP Address
One of the other great benefits of using Google Analytics is that you can filter specific IP addresses from being included in your website metrics.
This means that if your team is constantly working on your website from your office, this may skew your data.
Filtering your office IP address will solve this issue.
30. E-commerce Functionalities
If you run an E-commerce store, you’re in luck!
Google Analytics comes with many e-commerce functionalities including the ability to view and understand shopping behaviour, checkout behaviour, product performance, sales performance, and more.
31. Automated Analytics Intelligence And Insights
You will also be shown insightful analytics on a daily basis.
You will get notifications for week-over-week website performance, bounce rate increases or decreases, anomalies, etc.
These prompts will show you what Google thinks is data that would be useful to your understanding of your website visitors.
32. Insights On Demand
You can also request a wide range of insights yourself.
There is a section where you can view different insights based on category, such as content analysis, trends, user behaviour, geographic analysis, etc.
Within these sections are useful questions such as “How many visitors did I have last week?”, “Why did my users change last week?”, ” What are my top pages in terms of pageviews?”, and much, much more.
Conclusion
Overall, there are dozens upon dozens of benefits of Google Analytics.
From acquisition channels, to user behaviour, to bounce rates, demographics, geographics and more – the list goes on and on.
Google Analytics proves to be a powerful tool that should be taken advantage of immediately.
The benefits of using such a tool make it so that it is a clear no-brainer to use it for your website.
Contact Active Business Growth today to help install your Google Analytics and see for yourself!
