As an Internet marketer, it is essential to understand how people behave on the web. Which sites are the most visited? What websites do my customers use? And what can I do to increase visitors’ conversion rate?
For this reason, Google Analytics was released. GA lets you monitor the online activity of your users so that you can optimize their experience on your website.
“Conversion rate” is the percentage of visitors that complete the desired task (for example: purchase a product, subscribe to a newsletter, or download a file) and it measures the effectiveness of your site. If you understand how people behave on your website, then you can optimize their experience and increase the conversion rate through conversion rate optimization techniques.
I will not go into the details of Google Analytics, but I will explain how to use it in order to understand your website and increase its conversion rate.
First thing first : you need to set up an account. The signup is free ( http://www.google.com/analytics/ ). Once you are done with the registration, take a look at the following screenshot:
What does Google Analytics do?
Google Analytics gathers online data and then it shows this information to you through line charts, bar graphs, map views etc. from which you can take smart decisions for your website, as well as google review response.
In order to make things easier, let me highlight what you should pay attention to in every step of your activity.
Create a profile for each website you want to monitor with Google Analytics. From the main menu, click on “Admin” and then “Your Profile” . You can create up to 20 profiles in one account.
You need to add a profile every time you create a new website or a blog under your existing website.
Every profile must have a unique name and it is not advised to use special characters.
Once you create your profiles, the next step is to add your website’s URLs . From the main menu, click on “Property” then “Manage Property” or “Monitors”, if you already created profiles before. Click on “Create monitor” and add your website’s URLs one by one.
You will need to repeat this step every time you create a new webpage under your existing website or when you want to monitor a new site. Finally, select the profiles and the URLs for which Google Analytics should be enabled. From the main menu, click on “Admin” then “All profile” or “All monitors” . Tick the profiles or URLs you want to monitor with Google Analytics and click on ” Apply” .
Google Analytics runs in almost all web browsers, so you don’t have to download anything. The only thing that you need is a common browser like Firefox , Chrome or Safari . After enabling your website(s) for Analytics, you will be able to access your Analytics accounts from http://www.google.com/analytics .
After logging into Google Analytics, the next step is to create a report for each profile you want to monitor with GA. Every report has a name and it’s up to you which information you want to show in it.
You can access your reports with the following URL: http://www.google.com/analytics/#ProfileName/ReportName
The most common report is ” Visitors” because it shows you how many visitors per day, week or month your website had, where they are from (country) and which pages they visited on average per visit .
Every report has an ” Overview” which shows you how many visitors per day, week or month your website had, where they are from (country) and which pages they visited on average per visit . You can also see how these numbers evolved during the last months.
The best way to understand what is happening with your website is to compare the ” Overview” from different reports. The more you understand what your visitors are doing on your website, the easier it will be to optimize their experience and increase conversion rate,