The Power Of Google Analytics

If you don't already know about Google Analytics you and your company are missing out on a great resource and a vast amount of business potential. Google analytics give you more information and guidance on the performance of your web site than just about any other tool available today!

Since I began using the Google Analytics program my eyes have been opened to all sorts of information that I previously took for granted. Many of the site statistics packages that I had used in the past offered a lot of valuable tools and information and gave me great insight into which of my pages were being hit, how many times, and other typical bits of data. The Google program takes these principles and accelerates them beyond anything that I've seen to date!

Google's analytics tell me all kinds of things down to what screen resolution my customers have on their computers, what color space they're using all the way to what ISP they're using and beyond. They have graphs, pie charts, and lists all built around your site and how its performing. The best part is you can juxtapose almost any of the graphical data with any other set of graphical data that is provided. You can see, for example, how many hits you've received in the last week, compared to how many of those hits were new visitors!

But it goes a lot further than that! The Google analytics program also shows you an impressive interactive world map that shows you which countries, states, and cities have been view your site, when, and how they got there. The program also includes search engine statistics; what keywords are being typed in to search engines to get to your site. It tells you which pages are getting hit the most, how they're searching for it, and what their internet connection speed is! The Google Analytics program is absolutely phenomenal!

Since I've run my sites through Google Analytics, I've been able to see what my customers have been searching for, and if I don't have it, I now have the edge to go get it! I run a video and music production company, and one of our product lines is a long list of sound effects. The Google program has, upon several occasions, turned me on to products (sound fx) that my customers were looking for that I never would have thought about recording. And most of the time I can have those sounds recorded and uploaded in just a few hours. The Analytics update daily, so its like getting custom requests from customers each day!

Another fascinating thing that I've seen on here in relation to traffic is its ability to show you how people are getting to your site. The reason this is helpful is that it shows me what percentage of my customers are reaching me from search engines, which search engines, what percentage of customers are reaching me through referrals, what or where they were referred from, and lastly, what percentage of my customers were direct traffic and what they were typing in to become direct traffic. The information that I'm getting from the referral data is showing me which of my marketing campaigns are working and which ones aren't doing so hot. This daily influx of information allows me to make quick, easy changes to my marketing strategies and track how they're doing on an almost daily basis!

When used in conjunction with Google's other tools, Google AdWords, Google AdSense, Google Base, and Google Business Solutions among others, Google Analytics is a powerful and infinitely useful resource for any smart business owner. If you aren't using this tool you're behind the times and behind your competitors! Google Analytics has more power in its little pinky than just about anything else you'll find on the web. And the best part is... It's Free!