Introducing Google Analytics

Google Analytics logo fragment

We love AdWords, yet, as great as AdWords is, it also leaves some stones unturned. In fact, a whole shedload of stones…

Let’s say that you’ve got a pretty decent 10% conversion rate on your online shop selling antique fishing lures (yup, an awesome part of writing this AdWords guide is that we get to invent the craziest of web shops). AdWords can tell you exactly how many people clicked on your ad and how many of those people ended up converting and purchasing a ‘1980s lure for Norwegian cod’.

That’d be one. Just kidding! Whatever information you need about your conversions, you can find it on AdWords, but what about those people who drifted anonymously through your web shop without ever making a purchase? After all, the more you’d know about these lost souls, the more you could do to change your site to make it more appealing to them so they’d convert too.

Using Google Analytics for Growth

Cue Google Analytics. With it, not only will you know everything about your conversions, but also about the 90% of those fishing aficionados who weren’t tempted by your antique fishing lure collection. Why weren’t they? Which pages did they check out and for how long? Were they returning visitors or brand new ones? All of these and many more questions are answered by Google Analytics.

Firstly, Google tracks every single movement of your site visitors and makes this data available to you via Google Analytics. It is then up to you to mine the data and analyse the behaviour of the people who aren’t converting, pinning down the ‘problem areas’. It’s like a magical mirror that will point out every hypothetical bingo wing and every fold of stubborn fat of your site. Fixing those will improve any conversion rate issues you might have, which will improve your AdWords performance altogether.

On a more positive note, you can also use Google Analytics to find out what happens during the period between a click on your ad and the conversion—what’s the behaviour of your visitors while on your site. So, we implore you, don’t be overwhelmed by the word ‘analytics’, because there is nothing overly complex about it. Not only is it awesome and very useful, but, as with AdWords, Google has done an excellent job at making the dashboard of Google Analytics accessible, user-friendly and easy to understand.