Google Analytics Frequently Asked Questions
Google Analaytics is one of the most powerful, yet underused digital marketing tools available, and best of all it’s free!
Whilst the tool is free, it does need some configuration to set it up to get the most out of it otherwise, all you’ll get is raw data which won’t be tailored to your online presence. Whilst this is useful, there’s a lot of downsides if you just get your developer to install the Google Analytics code, and don’t go any further.
This Google Analytics set of Frequently Asked Questions should answer most of your questions about why it’s such an invaluable tool.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is the most popular online tracking and analysis software used today. At a very basic level it provides a lot of information about your website visitors and users, their origin and their behaviour so you can monitor, measure and improve your online presence.
At an advanced level it provides far more sophisticated and usable information to grow your business, but unfortunately most Google Analytics implementations go no further than putting the basic code on your website. You will not get the most out of it unless the configuration is modified slightly to clean up data, and report on important metrics for your business.
What are the benefits of Google Analytics?
Google Analytics should be the centre of your online marketing activities providing insights into which channels are working, which one’s aren’t, measuring the key performance indicators of your online presence, and allowing you to know all the valuable actions and revenue being generated online.
Google Analytics can also help you improve your website and revenue by seeing where users are spending most of their time, the most popular areas of your website to exploit, and the drop off in your online funnels and sales processes.
Why do I need Google Analytics?
Used correctly, Google Analytics can track all your multi channel online marketing activities, including some offline. If you understand and take action on the data, this will help make your website more visible and drive more revenue by improving your online presence.
Will Google Analytics save me money?
Used correctly, interpreting the data within analytics can save you money by making you realise which marketing channels are working, and which ones need improvement, or can be dropped.
Maybe you’re paying several hundred, or thousand dollars a year on a listing on a third party website? Using Analytics will help you know how much traffic you are getting from that link, and how much enquiries or revenue it’s driving. If it’s not driving revenue, you may be able to avoid renewing the listing, or haggle hard on the renewal price.
Will Google Analytics make me look better?
Data make you look better? Sure it can. When you are running any form of digital marketing you want to know what returns you are getting. This includes organic search engine optimisation, paid advertising (such as Google AdWords or Facebook), or any third party listings.
Without spending some effort workign out which goals and conversions you should be tracking, you’re probably not giving your marketing campaigns justice.
Here’s an example :
- I took over a Google AdWords campaign. The previous agency were over-reporting the returns so I was worried whether I could match it with real data. It turns out all that was being measured were online room bookings. When we added in contact forms, email clicks and particularly phone numbers, the campaign’s returns went through the roof.
These additional conversions added more than 600% return on investment to the campaign. Prior to this, none of these metrics were measured, and the campaign may have been stopped due to incomplete data. This would have been a very expensive mistake. We also realised a lot more activity was being driven from the AdWords campaign, including emails and calls to different areas of the business.
My web developer has put Analytics on my site, why do I need more work?
A simple installation of Analytics is just that. It will let you track the data, but to get more out of it, you really want to set up the goals you want to monitor and report on, so you can see the important elements that are happening online. This can range from phone number clicks, form submissions, online bookings and associated revenue, and whole range of other metrics
Coming soon :
My booking engine shows me how many direct and indirect bookings I get, what else will Google Analytics show me?
Is my Analytics Data Accurate?
What should I set up in Google Analytics?
Why do I need to look at Google Analytics regularly?
Google Analytics and Third Party websites.
Want more questions answered? Let us know and we’ll add them here.
If you’d like a Google Analytics audit, or want to learn more through a Google Analytics online training course, have a look on our digital marketing training courses page.