Google Analytics is a powerful and highly adaptable monitoring system that can help you to understand how effectively your Internet marketing strategies are actually working.

You can think of Google Analytics as a kind of school teacher monitoring your class work and issuing reports, only instead of school grades, detention and classroom performance, Google analytics is monitoring your web traffic, analyzing your marketing approaches, seeing if your ads work and recording the number and frequency of visitors to your website.

This kind of market research and analysis used to cost a fortune – Now, you can get it for free.  Isn’t Technology Grand?

It is very user friendly, in fact, anyone who can navigate the Internet and manage a basic website can use this web analytics solution.  The main ways that Google Analytics can help you to optimize your website are through:

✓Analytics Intelligence – Monitoring traffic, generating reports, giving you alerts when important changes occur

✓Advanced Segmentation – Identifying and analyzing specific sub-sections of your traffic for more focused market research e.g. by user location

✓Flexible Customization – Organizing data according to your own special criteria and requirements – every business is different and needs a customized marketing approach.

After considering the insights and feedback provided by Google analytics, you can write more effective advertisements.  You can ensure that your website converts sales more efficiently.  You can rapidly enhance your web traffic by using better marketing strategies.  You can sharpen your focus.

Sometimes, when you use Internet marketing approaches, it can feel a little bit like casting a tiny fishing line into a massive, raging ocean.  We all know that Internet Marketing can help you to maximize exposure, visibility and increase traffic.  What Google Analytics can help with is to ensure that you can measure precisely how effective your strategies are.  So Google Analytics can:

1. Improve Your Advertising
2. Increase Sales Conversions
3. Measure and Record traffic

Patterns and user behavior Google Analytics can help ensure that you incorporate the most effective keywords into your website content.  It can help you to identify you most responsive market base.  It can also improve your sales conversion rates and get you more customers.

Okay, Google is promising a lot here.  But it does seem logical when you consider that the Internet is comprehensively dominated by Google Search Engines.  It kind of makes sense to follow their follow their guidance and advice.

• Search Engines
• Advertising
• Email
• Cost Per Click
• Affiliate Links
• Social Media

Google Analytics will supply you with some wonderful information about HOW users act, behave and navigate your website.  For example:

• Average time on site
• Number of Visits
• Graphing tools to identify larger trends
• Conversion rates

As you read the data Google Analytics will help you interpret what it means – for example, multiple visits by a single visitor indicates brand loyalty.  Proven fact:  Brand Loyalty leads to higher conversion rates.

Key Information that Google Analytics considers includes visitor loyalty, average page views, time on site and recent visits.  By measuring and tracking these elements, Google Analytics can help you assess how effectively your marketing campaign engages visitors.  For example, by tracking the region, state and city where your users live, you can buy local key search words from Google that are area specific.  Then, you can use Google Analytics to measure the conversion rates on these keywords.

Small changes to key areas of your website can dramatically increase sales

conversions.  For example, having landing pages that are clear, simple, direct and contain exactly the information that users are looking for usually leads to sales.  Robert Kemp, Managing Director of Raging Creations, comments that people really underestimate the true power of a beautifully designed and highly functional website.

“Consider getting a really good, talented graphic designer to structure your site so that it is user friendly, compelling and easy to navigate.  Hire a creative writer to develop your content, and get professionals to build your site.  It really is cost effective in the long run because by setting up your site professionally, you are already making your website more appealing and interesting to users”

Analytics helps you focus on your steps to conversion by considering the fact those potential customers often fail to complete the conversion process.  What step is causing customers to jump ship and navigate away?  Google Analytics will give you information on:

• What percentage of visitors who start the conversion process actually complete the process?
• At what point did they ‘jump ship’ and stop completing the process? (You may need to fix this step)
• Where do they go? (Find and correct barriers to conversions)
• How do design and layout effect conversion?  It is amazing how an excellent graphic designer, writer and web builder can enhance your website and maximize its functionality.

1.  Sign up for an account.

2.  Cut and paste the Java Script provided into each page of your website

- IT IS THAT SIMPLE REALLY.

Avinash Kaushik suggests applying the following tests when evaluating how effectively your online marketing strategies are working.

Test 1 – How often do Visitors come back?

Test 2 – What is the Percentage of Repeat Visitors?

Test 2 – What are the Top Exit Pages on the Website?

Test 3 – What is the Conversion Rate for Top Search Keywords?

Test 4 – What is the Task Completion Rate?