What it is
Google Analytics is arguably the most widely-used web analytics platform - it tracks and reports on traffic to, and activity on, your website. Headline numbers like how many visitors, how many new visitors, and how long they spend on the site. But also more granular data - where they're located geographically, what technology they're using, how they found you, what pages they visit, and so on. And if it's properly set up, and you convert visitors into customers (by selling online, in the main) then it can also tell you what products you're selling.
On top of that, you can then combine those bits of information in a myriad of ways. Sent out a newsletter pushing a particular product and want to know how many people came to the website from that newsletter? It can tell you that and, more importantly, it can tell you how many of those people then went on to buy the product in question.
Finally, it integrates seamlessly with other Google products like Search Console (on which more in our next post in this series) and Ads, allowing you to track ROI from your ad spend, amongst other things.
How does it work
It operates through a small script either inserted directly into the page, or included via another of Google's products, Tag Manager. When someone arrives at your site, the script passes information to Google Analytics to record where they came from (social media, another site, search result), then tracks their journey through your site, monitoring interactions like clicks, form submissions and purchases.
It uses cookies and client IDs to help it to distinguish between new and returning visitors, and maintains user privacy by anonymising and aggregating the data that it records.
How do I know if I've got it
All too often we'll take on a new client and ask them if they've got Google Analytics in place, only to be met with a response of "I've no idea", at which point we'll investigate further. If you fall into that category, then you can use this online tool to quickly find out.
If it is in place, next step is to find out which Google account the Analytics "property" is associated with. That can be a bit trickier, particularly if it was set up as part of a site build, or redesign. If push comes to shove, it's often easier to just set up a brand new property and start feeding information into that.
How is it useful?
Knowledge is power, at the end of the day. It's all well and good to be able to say that you've got 1000 visitors to your website, but if you're running a nail salon in Barnet and 99% of those visitors are from Brazil, then you're not getting the right kind of visitors.
Likewise, if you've got a site that's not been updated since 2008, and 70% of your visitors are on mobile, then the chances are your site won't be working well for them - and the bounce rate (what percentage of visitors leave the site immediately after arriving) is another metric that Google Analytics will tell you that will confirm that.
If you're selling online, then tracking how many visitors convert into customers is key - as well as tracking what products you've sold (and how), you can also track the funnel of movement of visitors through the site, from arriving, to viewing a product, to adding it to their basket, to starting the checkout to completing the checkout. If you see a massive drop-off at any particular stage, then it gives you something to work on.
Even if you're not selling online, then you can still track how many visitors convert into enquiries via other methods - if you've got your phone number on the top of the site, then Google Analytics can tell you how many times that phone number was clicked to start a phone call. Likewise filling in of contact forms, or clicking on emails to send you a message.
What are the limitations?
At first glance - the amount of information that Google Analytics provides you with can be somewhat overwhelming. That's not down to technical know-how - there is a vast range of data there, and getting to the information that you need can be a bit of a minefield. In fact, we've recently moved to using Google's Looker Studio for actually analysing the data from Google Analytics - the latter still collects the data, but we use the former to set up charts, tables and graphs which just show us the information that we want most frequently.
The other is that because it's reliant upon small scripts operating within the visitor's browser, it's susceptible to being blocked. Historically this was through the use of browser extensions that the user would install, but with the rise of privacy-focused browsers such as Brave, it is becoming more common that the browser itself blocks that sort of script by default. So the numbers that are reported are skewed downwards, and can be compensated upwards by anything between 10% and 30% to compensate.
But, as we said in a more in-depth post on Google Analytics a few months, back, "[m]arketing without data is like throwing darts blindfolded". Having the data allows you to not just make more informed decisions, but also track the results of those decisions. And that's just plain sensible.
If you're not sure if you've got Google Analytics in place, or want to know more about how it can help your business, then feel free to get in touch with us for a no obligation chat.
Next in the series, we look at Google Search Console in Day 7 of our 10 Days to a Healthier Website series.