Why Google Analytics could be Essential to your Online Business?

For many businesses, moving into the ecommerce industry can be a daunting process. Not only is the design of the website crucial, but you also must ensure that you are getting your site noticed by optimising it correctly. This can be a very tricky process and it can sometimes be very tricky to determine how users are taking to your site and where key problem areas are. Google Analytics is a free internet application which provides a variety of tools to generate a variety of information about visitors to your website.



Once you have created an account for your site on Analytics, there are a selection of tools made available to you. Some of the most useful are available in the dashboard view where you can monitor the trends of use of your site. It contains charts displaying vital information about site usage. This can display information from several months to just a single day allowing you to measure total number of visits, page views and average time spent on the site. It also allows you to track the bounce rate (users jumping straight to another site on reaching yours, and the % of visits which came from new visitors.



Furthermore, you can trace exactly where (geographically and internet methods) your visits are coming from as well as which of your pages are receiving the most views. Through all of these informative features you can determine what is popular or unpopular about your site and to an extent determine who your demographic is.



These only constitute the basic aspects of Analytics. You can tailor certain aspects of Analytics so that it provides invaluable feedback such as alerts. Alerts allow you to select certain aspects of your site of advertising campaigns, and get Analytics to provide feedback once they have reached a set goal. For example, it can alert you once you have reached a target number in an ad campaign.



Goals are an extremely useful feature as they allow you to set up funnels to track how successfully users are navigating through key areas of your site (i.e. shopping basket) to the ultimate goal page, 'transaction complete'. For any ecommerce site the key aim is to get as many users to this stage as possible. Payment gateways play a vital part in internet sales because of this and a vital process in getting a successful sales business up and running is to secure a good payment service provider. By creating funnels you can determine at what pages of the site the most users are dropping out. Through this useful feature you can adjust your site to improve sales without having to go through extensive trial and error.



There are many other features available in Analytics and it is worth looking into whether you are looking to improve your site, or are just getting your business online.