Management By Measurement
Dr. Peter Drucker said “What Gets Measured Gets Managed”, and this is nowhere more true than online. If you have any sort of a website and don’t have analytical software installed, you are missing a tremendous opportunity. How can you improve your website if you don’t know when (or even if!) people are visiting? How can you remove the bad and improve the good when you don’t even know what parts of your site people like best?
When it comes to your website, you are not a reliable resource for determining what is and isn’t working! You may like a specific page, post, or image, but that doesn’t mean everyone who sees your site will. In fact, chances are they wont! The only way to know for sure how visitors see your site is to get the information from them directly, and the easiest way to do this is through web analytics software.
I’m not going to get into the debate about which analytics software to use (there are many), I’m just going to recommend one: Google Analytics. I recommend Google Analytics for 2 reasons: Number 1: It’s free. All you need is a Google account, and chances are good you already have that. If you don’t, getting one is free. Number 2: it works. Google Analytics tracks lots of data, likely more than you’ll ever need, and it makes it quite easy to spot the trends. Setting up Google Analytics is easy too, just head over to www.google.com/analytics and follow the instructions to get an account and set up your website.
Google Analytics works by having you place one small snippet of code on each page of your website. This snippet then automatically collects information such as how many people visit your site, where they come from (search engines, other sites, or direct), how long they stay on your site, how many pages they visit, and much more.
After Google Analytics has been installed on your site for a week or so begin to look at the statistics it shows. Two of the most useful metrics are right on the Dashboard (home screen) by default: the “Traffic Sources Overview” and the “Content Overview”.
The Traffic Sources Overview box provides you with a breakdown of how people are finding your site. Are they mostly coming to it directly (through bookmarks or by typing in your URL), or are they coming via Search Engines, or from links on other sites? Now you know! Clicking the “view reports” link at the bottom of the graph. This page will show you even more details. Here you can find which search engines and even which keywords send you the most traffic, which sites are linking to you (and how many people follow the links, and much more.
The other important metric is the “Content Overview” box on the Analytics dashboard. This box shows a list of the pages on your site that are getting the most traffic, as well as by how much. This makes it easy to see if there is one or two pages that generate the most interest on your site. Knowing what you’re doing right is the first step to improving any website!
The important thing to realize about Google Analytics is that it offers a tremendous amount of information… I’ve only talked about two of it’s many reporting features. As great as this variety is, it can also lead to “Paralysis by Analysis” if you’re not careful. Don’t spend so much time looking at the statistics and analyzing every last detail that you fail to improve and add to your site. No matter how much information you have, if you do not act on it then that data is worthless.
Tags: google anayltics
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