Intro to Google Analytics

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For any marketing professional in the Online Search world today understanding user behaviour on your site is critical. Some marketers will create various campaigns through ad serving platforms, such as AdWords, and will maintain that exceptional performance on these platforms constitutes success. However, these platforms (AdWords for instance) only track the user’s path to the landing page and assume marketing success. Intro – “Google Analytics”, one of the most useful tools offered by Google and unlike other 3rd party analytics it’s free! Options available for tracking user behaviour on a site are in abundance and the following will outline just a few ways to leverage Analytics on your site.

Google Analytics comes equipped with “Standard Reports” that provide immediate insight to visitor trends and behaviour. Marketers are able to see where users have come from, whether Paid, Organic, Referred, Social or Direct, and can track what they do once on the site. Understanding where users have come from provides the ability to leverage top performing sources as well as invest, both time and money, into those underperforming.

For any retail or service company, Analytics can be positioned to track E-Commerce on the back end accurately recording Product & Sales performance, Transactions and Time to Purchase. With E-Commerce implemented on a site marketers are able to see user drop offs and spending behaviour. If websites are seeing high traffic but low transaction numbers this indicates that the conversion process could be difficult to navigate, too long or simply ineffective; this should raise a flag to investigate and determine where drop offs in the conversion process are occurring and allow you to fix.

On the Paid side of search, Analytics can serve as a useful tool for evaluating both keywords and ad copy, allowing us to discover what resonates best with the user. With the ability to view ad performance based on revenue, transactions or conversions, campaigns can utilize top performing ad copy and adopt similar messaging for new/existing creative. Keywords can also be leveraged through Analytics, by identifying acquisition/conversion drivers optimization tactics, such as bid adjustments, can be made to better position these keywords to raise performance even further.

So there you have it, just a few ways how Google Analytics can help you understand user behaviour allowing you to leverage information to create optimal landing page and website experience.

Thanks!

D

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