How To Use Google Analytics

Introduction

Google is the most popular site for everyone these days. Whether it is for a common search, a history check or if you want to look up the meaning of a word, anything you can think of can be searched for on Google. Google is not famous for just its super powered search engine but also for its many other services it offers like Gmail, Google Scholar and the newly popular application of Google Analytics. What is Google Analytics? It is a Google application specifically designed to monitor website traffic, in laymen’s terms.

Step 1

Statics have shown that out of the top 10,000 websites, almost 57% are using Google Analytics to monitor their website traffic. And, the trend is growing exponentially. One of the major reasons for its success is its user friendliness in comparison to other applications out there. This brings us to our next question that is how to use Google Analytics for monitoring your website.

Step 2

When you start using the Google Analytics, you will have just one profile on your home screen. Click on view reports to get started. Now the Dashboard is the first thing you will see here while learning the Google Analytics process. The Dashboard basically provides you with the summary of all your reports in a glance.

Step 3

To add a report to the dashboard, click on the report to add it. You will also see a pie chart titled “trafficking overview” which will summarize the information divided in form of pies, dividing website hits approached from search engines and referring sites or direct traffic.

Step 4

It is very helpful if you add the most useful reports for you on your dashboard on Google Analytics. In the left hand navigation, you will find your reports in groups and anything about visitors, as to what their language preferences are, where they are from, what browsers do they use, etc. It also gives you information about which ads they prefer to click. E-commerce section contains your merchandising and revenue activity reports. 

Step 5

The active date range is always displayed at the upper right of your reports. Click on calendar or timeline to select a date range and then apply. Two date ranges can be compared with each other. What you can do is compare weekdays with weekdays and weekends with weekends. This will give you a meaningful comparison on the traffic coming to your selected website. Most of the reports have a scorecard. This tells you by which method online hits were made. For instance, it will give you a number under “keywords.” That will tell you the number of visits made due to the keywords and also some more details about their visits. Similarly, there are many more aspects about the websites that have been broken down into meaningful interpretations through Google analytics. You can choose the way you want to look at your data as a pie chart, as bar charts, just in terms of percentages or whatever makes the most sense to you.

Tips

Google Analytics is a useful tool for any website manager. If used accurately, it can increase your efficiency ten folds. All you need to do is invest the initial time understanding this application; it then becomes your second nature. Do not get overwhelmed by its different outlook. It takes a little time but after that you will be surprised how useful this application really is.

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