Last Updated on March 18, 2015 by Nicholas Ho
Why install Google Analytics? because if you don’t you are missing out on one of the most important tool as a website owner.
Google Analytics measures and in turn reveals many things about your website. It is impossible to operate a business without accounting software, it is the same thing as operating a website without analytics. Here are some of the top reasons why you should install Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is free of charge to use.
It has fantastic functionality and can measure many dimensions about your website like:
- How many people are visiting your website? This measures the effectiveness of your website (marketing, design, SEO, SEM)
- Where are your visitors from? Local, Interstate, international this could affect your marketing and logistic
- What type of devices are your visitors using (PC, Tablet or Mobile)? Close to 50% of all web traffic is via a portable device. Households and young users predominantly use portable devices such as tablets and smartphones
Find out who is stealing web traffic 
With Google Analytics you can easily see how many non-English speaking countries are visiting you website.
- This is normally an ‘area of concern’ because it quite often means extra “hacking activity” and you need to take security precautions
- Sometimes theses types of activities can consume excessive bandwidth
- It can slowdown your website or more importantly be phase 1 of an automated web attack.
It shows you how and type of visitors found your website
Measuring metrics such as number of Uniques Visitors, percentage of new visitors returning visitors are so important
- Analytics will show you if you website was found from a search engine, adwords or referrals from other websites
- Unique Visitors – indicates the number of true traffic. For example: If a visitor browses your website twice in 30mins this is counted as 1 unique visit
- If your website is relatively new and you are on the growth path then you would expect ‘new visitors’ to be greater than ‘returning visitors’
- Having returning visitors is great for websites like Blogs and shopping websites or in the process of creating a brand name
It indicates where you website needs adjustments
- High bounce rate could indicate you need a better homepage, or the content is not engaging
- Poor “flow” could indicate the lack of navigation to travel to the next page or not having enough engaging links.
- It reveals which pages visitors click on most
It shows if your website is costing you money or making you money
- An average small business will spend an average of $1000-5000 on a simple website.
- How many visitors do you expect your website to attract?. Say your Initial Investment was $5000 and you had 50 unique visits and no conversions.
- Each web visit has just cost you $100 and with no sales, which makes the website very expensive.
- Analytics can show you where you need to improve to get your ROI
Google Analytics Time Savers
You might be concerned about how much time or the technical challenges you will have once you have Google Analytics installed, here are 3 ways to overcome these challenges which can be made available on your smartphone or tablet.
- Setup Google Analytics to email you reports automatically which can be timed on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly)
- Have your service provider setup a custom dashboard so you can see all of the important stuff on one screen without having to go through multiple clicks.
- Install the Google Analytics Apps for Ipad/Iphone or Android – login once and have your analytic report at your fingertips 24 x 7
Itunes Store Link – https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/google-analytics/id881599038?mt=8
Google Play Store Link – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.giant&hl=en
Summary – Why Install Google Analytics
- Find out who is stealing your traffic
- It shows you how and type of visitors found your website
- It indicates where you website needs adjustments
- Find out if your website is costing you money or making you money
Anything Else
Google Analytics can be installed on its own. Google has created integration points for AdWords and webmaster tools. The integration will bring about additional benefits which I will blog about later. Hopefully, we have supplied you with enough information on Why Install Google Analytics.
As always if you have any questions about this article please contact us. If you would like Netology to look at installing Google Analytics for your website or verify if it has been integrated with your website correctly please call us, we will be very happy to help.
