Google Analytics tracks information about the traffic to your website. It helps in determining how visitors find your site, what pages are most important to your visitors, and how visitors interact with your site.
It gives you detailed information about such items as
- demographics of your visitors
- time spent on your site
- which pages are most visited
- navigation paths visitors take
- which pages are most exited
- and so much more
Google Analytics is free but it requires specific code to be added to every page of your site. This may require you contacting your web designer.
Once Google Analytics is set up for your website, you can sign in to Google Analytics to get traffic information. Be aware that traffic information starts the day your google analytics account is set up. It is not able to track any previous visitor information.
Google Analytics can be overwhelming. To keep it easy, there are certain stats you want to pay attention to.
Visitors Overview
Unique Visitors
Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. (vs the Visitors parameter which includes duplicate visits by same visitors.)
Pageviews
Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed on your site and is a general measure of how much your site is used.
Pages / Visit
Pages per visit is one way of measuring visit quality. A high Pages/Visit number suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site.
Traffic Sources
Sources
This report provides an overview of the different kinds of sources that send traffic to your site whether it’s search engines or direct traffic.
Keyword
This shows you what visitors are typing in on search engine sites that eventually lead them to your site. This is a great tool to determine what keywords are being used to find your site.
Content Overview
Top Content
Which are the most commonly viewed pages on your site, and how are they used? The table lists all of the pages which were viewed on your site.
There are many more things that can be tracked with Google Analytics. But, this gives you a good start.
What questions do you have about Google Analytics? What has been your experience with Google Analytics?