Why Google Analytics?

In a time where technology is becoming a stronger force in the everyday lives of many, marketers need to be able to take advantage of opportunities where we can learn more about our online users. Google Analytics allows for us marketers who are interested in learning more about our new and returning buyers, to find and test effective ways to market our businesses. This week I took a few hours to complete my Google Analytics courses and I am here to tell you why you should too! Not only is the course free, but it is also extremely simple to complete. Justin Cutroni and Krista Seidan talk you through each lesson and demonstrations to help you navigate the Google Analytics interface.

Google Analytics for Beginners

The four-part beginners course starts by showing how users can begin by setting up an account, create tracking codes, and set up desired filters. At this point you can begin learning more about your buyers and analyzing their behaviors. By using reports you can find information such as what kind of device buyers are using, a general location and their language; knowing such characteristics allows for Google Analytics users to understand why marketing efforts are successful or not, or how to most effectively tap into specific markets.

Each organization can develop multiple accounts, properties and views which allows for your business to view the data from your website and specific pages through filters that you would like to analyze. This customization feature allows for businesses to obtain and analyze the data that is important to them, because who wants data that they don't need? Another great feature is the ability to add your businesses goals, which allows for an easy assessment of how goals can or are currently being achieved.

The main goal for most businesses is to achieve purchases, and purchases typically happen in three steps: acquisition, behavior and conversion. As described in the videos these three steps act as a funnel, acquisition being where customers become aware of the product, behavior being where they engage with the product and conversion where they actually purchase it. These 3 steps can be seen and followed through reports which ultimately lead to future purchases with your ability to improve your businesses actions.

Advanced Google Analytics

The advanced course is much like the beginners course but goes into further detail about specific features such as data collection, filters, dimensions, metrics, event tracking and more. A particularly important feature outlined in the advanced course is remarketing. Remarketing allows you to target ad content to people who have already visited your website. When these users visit your website and don't make a purchase you can use remarketing to show your ads to bring them back to your site and hopefully lead to a purchase. This is something you might be familiar with, I personally find myself skimming through retail sites and later on Facebook see ads for the exact item I was eyeing earlier. A very important thing to note about remarketing is that it is based on use'rs cookies so when a users cookies are deleted they will no longer be remarketed, until they visit your site again.

So Why is Google Analytics Important?

To revisit the question asked earlier, why is Google Analytics so important? I asked myself the same question last week. Data can be intimidating and overwhelming but with a tool like Google Analytics which allows for you to see data that YOU want through the filters that YOU need makes data analysis simple for any business.

The data collected in the reports for your business can help determine your direction, where you might need to focus more attention or where you have achieved a desired level of success. In today's world where a business' online presence is becoming more and more crucial for it's overall success, Google Analytics can be the tool to help you achieve the goals of your business.

As Justin and Krista would say,

Happy Analyzing!