Google Analytics
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool offered by Google to help you
analyse your website traffic.
‘’That’s why over 50 million websites around the world uses Google
Analytics’’
Simply put, Google Analytics puts several lines of tracking code into the code of
your website. The code records various activities of your users when they visit
your website, along with the attributes (such as age, gender, interests) of those
users. It then sends all that information to the GA (Google Analytics) server
once the user exits your website.
Next, Google Analytics aggregates the data collected from your website in
multiple ways, primarily by four levels:
For example, just knowing the total amount of people visiting your website is
not very helpful to your business. Knowing how many people visit your website
by age or location, on the other hand, is very helpful to figure out who your
core audiences are on the internet. You may learn, for instance, that 80% of
your visitors are women between 25–35 in east coast cities (NYC, DC, Boston)
— that’s extremely useful and actionable information about who you should
be targeting with your digital marketing.
In this example, the raw number of visits is the metric, and age and gender are
dimensions by which you segment that metric.
What kind of data are available on Google Analytics, and what can you do
with them?
There are two types of data that you can collect in Google Analytics:
1. User Acquisition Data: data about your users before they visit your
website
2. User Behaviour Data: data about your users when they visit your
website
(1) User Acquisition Data
Before users visit your website: you can access data about your user
demographics before they visit your website (e.g., their age, gender, and
interests). You can also get data about where they are coming from, whether
that’s Facebook, other websites, or Google search. I call these data “user
acquisition data” because they can help you figure out which user group and
channels to target.
These characteristics of your web visitors, such as what media channel they
frequent and their demographic information, are intrinsic to the users
themselves. You really cannot do much to change these attributes.
Luckily, the internet is huge, so even though you cannot change these intrinsic
characteristics of your visitors, you can choose specific user groups on the
internet who have the characteristics you want to target. You can attract more
of them to come to your site by running targeted ads through Facebook,
Google, and other advertising platforms. Your user acquisition data can serve
as the guiding compass to direct your digital marketing strategy and activities.
The second group of data are “user behaviour” data, which are collected
during a user’s session on your website. “User behaviour” data include:
“User behaviour” data can serve as a guide for you to improve your website so
more of your users end up converting, whether that means making a purchase
on your website, or signing up for your newsletter.