Using Google Analytics To Chart Success
This blog entry was posted on January 22, 2009.
Using the S.M.A.R.T. method detailed by Doug in his earlier blog, the easy part is to set and define a goal. But how do you keep track of your goal and measure it?
Use Google Analytics! It’s free, powerful, and is perfect for the casual user to check out cool statistics or the business owner looking to set up goals and measure them.
How do you get access to Google Analytics? Well, if you have an @gmail.com email address, you already have an account! Just go to Google’s home page and click “My Account” at the top-right or sign in. Clicking on “Analytics” takes you to this tool. Be forewarned, however, you can’t run Analytics on any site – you need to prove that you own it. This step could be the most complicated for some.
To prove ownership, you need to add a snippet of code generated by Google into your website’s code. This shows that you have ownership of the domain, plus it’s the way to track visits to your website. After following the tutorial and putting Google’s code into your website’s code, wait a little bit for confirmation and the stats will start flowing in.
And these are the main areas you will find within your Google Analytics account. Each area goes into further detail with more stats that you can imagine. Wonder what your visitors do on your site? Check out “Visitors” and look at fun stats like how long your typical visitor spends on your website, average pageviews per visit, or their loyalty (which visitors return and how many times).
It’s easy to get flooded with a massive amount of data and try to make sense of everything, and that’s where setting up goals is an easy way to chart your progress…which would make for an excellent blog a little further down the line.
Have some fun playing around with Google Analytics, and if you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below.
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Filed under: Internet Marketing
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 4:54 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.No Comments
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What would be sweet is if you could write a follow-up post detailing a couple of key performance indicators (KPIs) you find most useful in charting success
Comment by Christian — January 22, 2009 @ 9:57 am
I second that. Can you give us an example. I am still learning and would appreciate that.
Comment by web analytics kpis — February 11, 2009 @ 2:34 am