Important advanced features from Google Analytics
Once you have the basics down, you’ll want to dig a little deeper into some of the advanced features that Google Analytics has to offer.
Goals
Your Web site should allow your visitors to accomplish something. Think about what you want your users to do when they visit your site. It could be making an online donation, purchasing a product, filling out a quote request form or viewing a document library. Whatever your goals are, they should be measurable and Google Analytics will help you track them.
To set up a goal, click on Analytics Settings at the top of the page, then click on Edit next to the profile you want to set up goals for. The second section on the next page will be called Conversion Goals and Funnel. Set up your goals here by clicking on Edit next to an empty goal slot and following the instructions.
After your goals have been established, you can track them by clicking on the Goals option from the dashboard. The number that you’ll be most interested in is conversion rate. This is simply the percentage of visitors that came to your site and then completed one of your goals. Knowing this number will allow you to tweak your site in order to make your conversion rate go up.
Site Search
If your Web site doesn’t have a built-in search function, you may want to give the Google site search a try. It easy to set up and install (though you may have to ask your webmaster to deal with the HTML part) and it integrates with Google Analytics.
Why is the site search important? Visitors will use a site search when they don’t immediately find what they are looking for. Knowing what visitors are searching for is important. If you notice that hundreds of visitors are searching for “jobs” on your Web site, it means that information about jobs is important and not readily available. This will allow you to make information about jobs easier to find, therefore giving your visitors a better experience.
AdWords
Google AdWords is a program that allows you to pay for your placement on Google’s search results page. If you want more information on this program, check out this article on SEO. If you have a Google AdWords account established, you can integrate it with your Google Analytics account. This will allow you to view reports on how much traffic is coming from your Google AdWords advertisements and how much is coming from other sources. Knowing this will allow you to make informed decisions about how much money to put toward search engine advertising.
Site Overlay
Site Overlay is a useful feature found under the Content section. Clicking this report will launch an image of your Web site home page, with statistics on where users are clicking on the page. This is useful information if you care about how your home page is laid out. Perhaps something that you thought really stood out is being ignored by most visitors. Knowing this will allow you to make small changes to the layout of your home page in order to do a better job of directing visitors’ actions.
These are just a few of the advanced features that Google Analytics offers.
Using this powerful tool to its fullest extent will allow you to make informed decisions about your Web site. So if you can afford free, jump in and give Google Analytics a try.
