Google Analytics is an incredible tool. With Google Analytics, you can decide exactly what you want to measure on your site. This tool is easy to personalize and get working for you exactly the way that you want.
This is a tool which puts you in control; letting you decide on the specific goals and objectives of the measurements you want from the system. If you only need to know who your visitors are and how they found you, Google Analytics can certainly do that. But the real value of this tool is that you can define whatever filters will best help to analyze the traffic going to your site.
What does all of this mean for you? Let's have a more in depth look to give you a better understanding of how exactly Google Analytics works for you. Google allows you to set all of the specific objectives to pinpoint what you are trying to do in many aspects of website management.
Objective: The big picture - what do you want from the visitors to your site? What is your site's purpose; and how can you work with your visitors to achieve that purpose?
If your site is an e-commerce site the answer is simple - you want to sell things and make a profit. However, you will want to know what is selling (and what isn't) to determine what you should sell more of and what it may be better to remove from your catalogue.
This would be an objective.
Goals: Objectives are the long term aspirations for your site, goals are short term ones. What do you need to do to hit your goal? Do you need to track visitors who enter from a certain page? Or is your goal to sell more of a particular item within a set time frame?
This is possible using Google Analytics. You can set these goals from within the application itself.
Specifics: Knowing your objectives and goals prepares you to really use the full power of Google Analytics. Specifics are the steps you need to take to make your goals and objectives a reality.
For instance, you can set up your dales page and a funnel (using Google Analytics for the funnel) to evaluate where traffic is coming to your site from. Google will be able to tell you where visitors enter and exit your site. This will give you an understanding of how people interact with your site and the kinds of responses your site tends to elicit in visitors. This in turn gives you the starting point you need to go to your pages and fine tune them in order to further your progress towards your goals.
Google has made it easy to set up. They'll do the initial metrics and it's all free!
You'll need to add a little code to your webpages; if you aren't tech savvy you can have your webmaster or an IT staffer take care of this part. As soon as the code is placed, Google Analytics will begin collecting stats - in a matter of days, you'll be able to look at all manner of statistics about your site.
Once you're comfortable with the user interface, you can set the goals and specifics for your site. You can access all of this data online; setting your parameters at any time you want.
One of the other many useful features of Google Analytics is the ability to set different sections or "profiles" of your site and watch them independently of others, which heps you to fine tune your site.
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