Would you mind researching about your visitor preferences? I mean user tracking. Well, if you are think about what pages attract most of your visitors, it will help you in future to decide which topics, content, products or services can grab more attention when introducing new products, services or when generating fresh content to grab more user attention. In that case, statistics of your site visitors can be really helpful. Most probably you would like to know how many of people exploring your pages.
Further you would be delighted if you can measure how visitors use your site, from where they coming and how much of them are returning. All sorts of such information are crucial to take necessary actions toward your goals and can help you to avoid risking your time and money on unnecessary plans too. So would you love to analyze your blog or website visitors and plan useful strategies to achieve your future goals and objectives?
Further you would be delighted if you can measure how visitors use your site, from where they coming and how much of them are returning. All sorts of such information are crucial to take necessary actions toward your goals and can help you to avoid risking your time and money on unnecessary plans too. So would you love to analyze your blog or website visitors and plan useful strategies to achieve your future goals and objectives?
Why Analytics?
Analytics? Wha... What? Ohw yeah, as Wikipedia defines it,
Here the trinity would be Technology, Research and Statistics. The blend of these three factors can be make use to solve problems and keep you off from unpredictable results in future goals. As I've mentioned earlier, gaining insights are really helpful in constructing goals, especially for long-term objectives. Usually analytics services provide insights such as visitor insights, traffic sources, social impact, site content exposure. There are different type of analytics services out there - Paid or Free. If you remember, we have discussed about StatCounter earlier. As a free service, Google Analytics provide broad and detailed picture of your site and visitors too.
Google Analytics is a web analytics solution which provides detailed statistics about your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. If you would like to track statistics for your website, Google Analytics gonna be the next friend of yours. It's rich with easy-to-use new set of features and can track visitors from all referrers such as search engines, e-mail marketing etc. Google Analytics will let you know how visitors interact with your website. Here I would like to list out some important features and data flows you can find at Google Analytics.
Visitor Reports - Google Analytics provides statistics reports of your site visitors. You can view insights such as visitor language, location, engagement, browser, operating system, service provider and devices.
Advertising Efforts - You can measure your advertising and marketing efforts, popular keywords to target your content, search queries and effective placements.
Traffic Reports - You can analyze and view data such as traffic sources (Direct traffic, Referral traffic and Search traffic) in detail. Further you can asses your search engine optimization efforts and social impact.
Content Reports - You can analyze what content get more attention of your visitors and pageviews for each page individually. In addition it reports how you blog or website perform on different popular web browsers, your site search usage and search terms.
Conversion Reports - Google Analytics helps you define your own goals and track them with visitor insights. If you are selling or offering products, Google Analytics can measure conversion efforts on your site for individual products to find out how productive your marketing efforts are.
Analysis Tools - Google Analytics offer set of real-time tracking tools, ability of custom report generation, segmentation of visitors, visualization of data and in-page analytics tools.
However if you are much considered about individual and real-time user tracking, StatCounter is much better in that scenario. But I recommend using them both for maximum effectiveness. We have already discussed about integrating Google Analytics for Blogger. Here you can find how to integrate Google Analytics to your blog or website in few easy to follow steps.
Before You Go:
You need to have a Google account to sign in to Google Analytics. If you have no Google account already, create a new Google account before proceeding to below steps.
Analytics is the application of computer technology, operational research, and statistics to solve problems in business and industry.
Here the trinity would be Technology, Research and Statistics. The blend of these three factors can be make use to solve problems and keep you off from unpredictable results in future goals. As I've mentioned earlier, gaining insights are really helpful in constructing goals, especially for long-term objectives. Usually analytics services provide insights such as visitor insights, traffic sources, social impact, site content exposure. There are different type of analytics services out there - Paid or Free. If you remember, we have discussed about StatCounter earlier. As a free service, Google Analytics provide broad and detailed picture of your site and visitors too.
Can You Rely on Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a web analytics solution which provides detailed statistics about your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. If you would like to track statistics for your website, Google Analytics gonna be the next friend of yours. It's rich with easy-to-use new set of features and can track visitors from all referrers such as search engines, e-mail marketing etc. Google Analytics will let you know how visitors interact with your website. Here I would like to list out some important features and data flows you can find at Google Analytics.
Visitor Reports - Google Analytics provides statistics reports of your site visitors. You can view insights such as visitor language, location, engagement, browser, operating system, service provider and devices.
Advertising Efforts - You can measure your advertising and marketing efforts, popular keywords to target your content, search queries and effective placements.
Traffic Reports - You can analyze and view data such as traffic sources (Direct traffic, Referral traffic and Search traffic) in detail. Further you can asses your search engine optimization efforts and social impact.
Content Reports - You can analyze what content get more attention of your visitors and pageviews for each page individually. In addition it reports how you blog or website perform on different popular web browsers, your site search usage and search terms.
Conversion Reports - Google Analytics helps you define your own goals and track them with visitor insights. If you are selling or offering products, Google Analytics can measure conversion efforts on your site for individual products to find out how productive your marketing efforts are.
Analysis Tools - Google Analytics offer set of real-time tracking tools, ability of custom report generation, segmentation of visitors, visualization of data and in-page analytics tools.
However if you are much considered about individual and real-time user tracking, StatCounter is much better in that scenario. But I recommend using them both for maximum effectiveness. We have already discussed about integrating Google Analytics for Blogger. Here you can find how to integrate Google Analytics to your blog or website in few easy to follow steps.
Before You Go:
You need to have a Google account to sign in to Google Analytics. If you have no Google account already, create a new Google account before proceeding to below steps.
Steps:
1. Go to Google Analytics.
2. Click Sign in link and sign in using your Google account credentials.
3. Now you will redirect to Google Analytics sign up page. Click Sign up button to continue.
4. Make sure you are in the Website tab and provide required details to set up your account.
5. Click Get Tracking ID button.
6. Now select the region, and read and accept the Google Analytics Terms of Service.
7. You will directed to the page where you can find website tracking code.
8. Copy and add your tracking code to every web page you wanna track. It should be placed before the </head> tag.
Note: If you are a Blogger user, you have to follow another procedure from now on. Read How to Add Google Analytics to Blogger.
Enjoy :-)
Great Post Mayura! I've heard about Google Analytics, but I didn't know how it works. Now I know how it works and how we can use it. :) Thanks for sharing this valuable info dear.
Hi Chathu,
Google Analytics is a really great tool to track your visitors and to analyze all data collect to plan about what goals you need to prioritize. Have it enabled for your blog and check it out yourself. I hope you find it really valuable :)
Thanks for stopping by and for compliments dear :)
Cheers...
Informative post Mayura!
Oh yes - Google Analytics is something that I use a great deal too and that's what shows me where I really stand. :)
I guess it matters a great deal to know where your visitors and traffic is coming from, and the finer details that accompany each of the features you mentioned above. I think using it for the kind of content that your readers are liking is something that I like as it helps me to focus my attention to that also.
When I was on Bloggers, I really had no idea about how to use it, though after switching to WordPress, I started using it and it does make a lot of difference.
Thanks for sharing and I am sure everyone is going to benefit from this post and the step by step procedure you always mention so well :)
Hi Harleena,
Google Analytics is a really cool and has advanced reporting and analysis features too.
Absolutely Harleena :) It has a great deal. Companies hire group of people just to monitor and analyze analytics to maximize effectiveness of their future products and to offer trending products according to customer preferences. Same goes to blogging too :)
On Blogger now it's really easy to integrate. 'Cause it's under Google family, right? ;) Anyway it's platform independent and I'm sure you make use of insights too. Most people just use it for tracking but never pay attention to the data it collect.
Thanks for your wonderful comment and ideas dear :) Always value your input.
Cheers...
Hi Mayura,
Google analytics is a great tool, but it can be a bit overwhelming at first for a inexperienced user sometimes. There are tons and tons of options for reports. I really like the custom report tool that sends a pdf file by mail to you automatically.
I also like the 'live' visitors screen and the 'live' page where there is information to be found on what links your visitors click when they are browsing your site. Like I said, an awesome tool!
Hi Jan,
I know what you mean mate :) First time users may find it's nothing but a complex interface with analysis reports and variables. Sometimes they may tend to give up on it too. But if we go through pages and tabs that makes sense to us, we can start learn how it helps us to construct future goals and how our visitors behave on our pages.
Absolutely it's an awesome tool :) I love custom reports and visitor analytics section. However I'm using Google Analytics and StatCounter too. The have some identical features :)
Thanks for sharing your views and experience on Google Analytics Jan :) Always love to know 'em.
Cheers...
What a great job Mayura showing everyone how to set up Google Analytics because everyone definitely needs to have it on their website and blog. It's a wealth of information and can really help you as time goes by understand where your traffic is coming from and all sorts of great scoop. I continue to forget some of the things I've done early on.
Thanks Mayura!~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne,
Definitely :) Google Analytics is a MUST have tool for bloggers and webmasters. It's a great solution research analytics, learn user behaviors and set goals for our blogs and websites.
As time goes by, we will get better understanding of, from where our traffic comes and goes. Kind of complex platform for newbies to understand all, but we gotta learn good stuff, right Adrienne? :)
Thanks for sharing your ideas on Google Analytics dear :)
Cheers...
Hello Mayura,
Very informative post!
Google analytic is really very cool tool to track our blog progress.
When I started blogging I don't had any clue about how to get started with Google analytic, so I researched very hard to understand it. And still the situation is quite similar because their are some features which I don't really understand and how to use them. But when it comes to tracking Google analytic is very good. Your guide will help new bloggers to understand Google analytic and how to get started with it. So thanks for sharing this great post. :)
Hi Romy,
Ha ha ;) It happened to me too mate. You know how it feels, right? Confusing. I don't know each piece of it but learnt a lot. I'm hoping to bring out specific features in future posts so it would help people learn more features specifically while learning more of Google Analytics. Anyway you know how tracking goes with it and that's great. You are not giving up. Stick to it and learn slowly. Take time :) It's alright.
Thanks for your comment and yeah, for your compliments too mate :) I really appreciate 'em.
Cheers...