Seeing what goes on at your web site with Google Analytics
If you’ve ever wondered what goes on at your web site between the enquiry e-mails and calls that you get (you DO get enquiries from your web site don’t you?) then there’s a simple way to find out.
Google provide a free facility called Analytics. It allows you to collect and view the statistics on various things about your web site. For example, you can see how many people visit it over a given time period, how they arrive at your web site, what pages they arrive at and what pages they view. You can also see what page(s) they tend to view before leaving the site. If you’re running an e-commerce site and the page most people leave from is the shopping basket then you have a problem!
The way to add this facility is to register with Google for an account. If you already use Gmail/Googlemail then you’re half way there. When you’ve created your account you’ll have a reference number – something like UA-11792739-1. If you update and maintain your web site yourself then you need to take the snippet of html code that Google supply and insert it onto each page, in the location they specify. If your site is maintained by an external Web Designer or marketing agency you need to give them your reference number and they will do the rest. If you’re web site is built using WordPress then there are plenty of extensions/plug-ins that will add this functionality for you. All you need to do is add your reference number.
When it’s up and running just access your account, click on the link for your web site and a large set of reports and graphs can be viewed covering just about every aspect of your web site’s operation. These figures and reports can be exported as Adobe PDF documents for printing and distribution.
By checking these reports on a regular basis you can identify trends and problems with the web site. If your visitors (and sales or enquiries) are not going up then you may want to review the content or structure of the site. If you do work to improve your ranking on Google you can see here whether it has resulted in increased visitors and from the source(s) you’d expect.
One small word of warning. The way Google collects the statistics from your site means that it doesn’t capture every visitor and page viewed. Rest assured though that it collects enough to give you a very good idea, over time, of whether your web site is working as you intend.
You can sign up for an Analytics account here: http://www.google.com/analytics/#utm_medium=et&utm_source=ww-en_uk-et-bizsol&utm_campaign=en
We add Google Analytics to virtually all our client’s web sites. If you’d like our help with this, please call or e-mail us.
