Red Kite Creative

google analytics

Learn the Analytics Basics

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Back in January I asked my clients what services they needed that I wasn’t providing – what would help them get more out of their website investment? Over 70% of them told me they’d like some basic training in using Analytics tools to better understand their sites.

Made sense… I always help clients get a Google Analytics account set up if they don’t already have one, and the tracking code onto their sites, and an XML site map so that the search bots can crawl properly. But most clients don’t know what to do with all the info they get from analytics, or what they should be looking at; what’s most important?

Learn to use Google Analytics and Search ConsoleAs a result of conversations with these clients I’m introducing a new service to help them get started using analytics, it’s called the Analytics Starter Pack.

It’s designed to help people get a basic handle on both Google Analytics and Google Search Console, including customized reporting that focuses on the key info they need to better understand what’s happening on their site. It also includes a training session to make sure clients are comfortable with using both tools.

Learn more about the Analytics Starter Pack – or sign up if you’d like to get the training yourself!

Friday Link Wrapup – Google Analytics, Mind Mapping, Getting More Clients

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The top website and marketing links for this week.

Here is a very, very basic overview of Google Analytics reports for beginners. This doesn’t go into detail – just provides a nice intro on three key default reports. And here’s a chart for learning your way around the features and controls in a report.

Learn how including some kind of penalty (limited time or supply) can increase clicks of your call-to-action buttons.

A few weeks ago I found this great, very simple to use mind-mapping app from Google. It’s called Coggle, and it’s a great way to diagram complex information for yourself or for a team.

Finally, a short article about turning prospects into paying clients by offering possible solutions of varying cost and effectiveness. It’s all about understanding their problems, not pitching your services willy-nilly.

Google Analytics Basics

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You’ve made the effort to get a free Google Analytics account and added the tracking code to your website or blog. You’re collecting data about every visitor and visit to your site. Now what?

A client asked me this morning how to best use Analytics to figure out what was happening on her website. Here are a few recommendations on getting your feet wet in the big world of web analytics:

Don’t want to wade through tons of data? Learn how to set up a report containing only the information you want to see and have it emailed to you every week (or whatever time interval you want to use).

Analyzing your own website – easily!

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Google Analytics is a good, comprehensive tool for the business owner who want to understand how people are finding and using his or her website. It’s got a user-friendly interface and provides a lot of information with only a little effort.

What’s the value of this?

If you know where most of your website’s traffic is coming from, you’ll have a better understanding of how to distribute your marketing efforts. What if you’re putting a lot of time into your Linked In presence but most of your traffic is coming from Facebook? Google Analytics can show you that and you can use that knowledge to your advantage!

You can also find out, among many other details:

  • What your most and least popular pages or sections are
  • What specific parts of a page visitors click on the most
  • Where your visitors live
  • How much time visitors spend on your site
  • Compare traffic (or anything else) over two date ranges
  • What other sites are referring traffic your way

You might find to your surprise that you’re getting a lot of visitors from Site X when you thought most were coming from Site Y, then adjust your marketing accordingly.

How Do I Get Google Analytics on My Website?

First you’ll need to sign up for a free Analytics account here. Add your URL (your website address) and it will provide you with a snippet of tracking code that needs to go on every page of your website.

The way you get the code onto your site varies. If you’re using WordPress, you can simply install one of the many Google Analytics plugins and it will ask for your user account information; just copy and paste and you’re done.

If you have an HTML website without any type of content management system (like Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, CMS Made Simple…) there will be a little more work involved. Your web designer/developer can easily add it for you, or if you know HTML you can do it yourself by adding it to the footer on each page just above closing ‘body’ tag.

About a day or so after you install the tracking code, your reports should begin showing on your  Analytics account’s dashboard.