Google Analytics Basics

Understanding Google Analytics basics will help leverage your online marketing campaigns and initiatives.  Analytics is a free Google service that facilitates “web analytics”, which is the science and study of how a website’s visitors behave. 

This is something very important for stakeholders in the world of e-commerce as a good understanding of the behavior of a website’s visitors will help improve page designs which can also greatly improve conversion rates, thus increase profits.

In essence, Google Analytics is not just for businesses, as it can also be used by non-profit organizations and individuals who own websites.  Using this data helps improve user experience on a website, thus help increase the number of visitors.  You need to have a Google account for you to be able to use Google Analytics, though it’s easy to create a free new account if you still do not have one.

Compliance With Google Analytics Basics

Google Analytics may be configured and you can even make your website compliant with the “standards” for accurate analytics.  Being standards compliant brings plenty of benefits to your business.  It can increase your rankings in search engines, resulting to getting more user views on your site.  Users will also have better experience while on your site especially with faster download times that could lead to reduced usage of bandwidth.

A website that is compatible with the latest browsing technologies would also have the edge in this highly competitive and dynamic e-Commerce world.  It is a “plus” factor if your website can be used by persons with disabilities.   Your business will be at an advantage if your website could be accessed using multiple device types like smart cell phones, handheld PDAs, smaller notebooks, or other android gadgets.  It should also be capable of facilitating easier updates and maintenance.

Understanding Important Website Jargons: Google Analytics Basics

With Google Analytics, you can see your website’s statistics.  Once logged in to your Analytics account, you are brought to your Analytics Home Page.  From this page, you can see your statistics if you click “View Reports”.  Prior to Analytics, webmasters referred to ‘hits’ as the impressions on a website.  Presently, “hits” are now replaced by terms that are more accurate to make sense in the online marketing world like “visits” and “page views”.

A “page view” is an instance of a page loaded by an internet browser.  To illustrate, if one user would look at 8 of your website’s pages, it would be counted as 8 page views.  A “visit” happens when someone lands on your page and then looks at more pages.  It does not matter if that user looks at 50 of your pages without abandoning your site, as that would still be counted as a single visit only.  The visit would terminate the moment that user abandons your site.

“Page per visit” is derived from the number of pages which a user sees divided by the number of visits.  For example, if 20 people visit your site, and the total number of pages that they get to see is 300, then the number of pages per visit is going to be 300 pages divided by 20 users, equivalent to 15 pages per visit.