Chapter 33
Google Analytics
Who's visiting your website? Any idea?
Precisely answering this question lies at the heart of online success. You can only improve what you measure. But before we get into determining who exactly your visitors are, I want to explain an important fact of life on the Internet. There are no secrets! This is a simple but powerful truth. On the Internet, everything can be tracked. If you're curious what people are searching for, you can find out. If you're curious which products are selling the best, you can find out. If you want to know where people are coming from and where they're going, you can find out. The process of measuring all this online activity is called website analytics, and everything on the Internet can be tracked using this process. Turns out, you can access some amazingly powerful tools without spending a penny . . . enter Google Analytics, stage left.
Let's break it down. Using Google Analytics, you can see:
- How many people are visiting your website.
- The keywords they used to find you on search engines.
- Which website referred them to you.
- What page they saw first.
- How much time they spent on your site.
- How many pages they visited.
- From what page they exited your site.
- The geographic location of your visitors.
- The browser they're using.
And a host of other facts, figures and statistics!
Installing Google Analytics is simple and free. Once you sign up for an account, the platform gives you a small piece of script ...
