Why Using Google Analytics Is Important For Your Business

In order to be successful, you need to constantly:

- refine and optimize your online marketing strategy
- refine and optimize your site navigation
- refine and optimize your content

Think of Google analytics as a thermometer for your website, it helps you check and monitor your online health. Without it, or a similar web analytics system, it's close to impossible to understand your visitors and why your visitors are leaving your website after viewing only one page.

With Google Analytics you will be able to understand what's performing poorly. It helps you gather information about what's happening on your website, and it helps you benchmark the effects.

When it comes to benchmarks, it's important to locate the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs represents key factors, specific to your company, that measure success. You'll have to decide what success is, then, what's the indicators for success.

Return on investment (ROI) is another important criteria for success. This is especially important for campaigns. Any expenses you might have can be calculated in terms of ROI. In other words, if you invest $100, how much money will you earn? It's all about tracking and testing.

I believe there are two steps to Google Analytics success.

First. If you're implementing Google Analytics for the first time, I recommend that you use the following reports:

- How many daily visitors you receive
- Your average conversion rate (sales, registration, downloads)
- Your top visited pages
- The average visit time on site and how often visitors come back
- The average visit page depth and how this varies by referrer
- The geographic distribution of visitors and what language setting they are using
- How "sticky" your pages are. Do your visitors stay or simply bounce off (single-page visits?)

Second. When you're ready for more advanced statistics, you should ask the following questions, and find the results using Google Analytics:

- What is the value of a visitor?
- What is the value of the web page?
- How does ROI differ between new versus returning visitors?
- How is your site engaging with visitors?
- Does the use of internal site search help with conversions?
- How many visits and how much time does it take for a visitor to become a customer?

I will be publishing tutorials for each of the Google Analytics reports.