Google Analytics Benifits

source: seowhitehats

Google Analytics is one of the best tools that can be used to track and monitor the traffic performance of your site.  Owning a website on the internet is not the end of your marketing. It is necessary that you keep track of the performance of the site in search engines so that rankings can be increased.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that gives you a better understanding on why web visitors visit your site. This is because Google Analytics provides information on which keywords are most effectively used in the website. On finding out which these keywords are, it is possible for the webmaster to enhance the number of visits to the site.

With the help of Google Analytics, it is possible to gain information on the way visitors visit the site and interact with it. This is because the webmaster will know which of the SEO campaigns help to deliver the best return on investment to the site, with the help of Google Analytics. And if you have installed software to find out internet marketing results of your website, Google Analytics helps in the tracking of results of internet marketing campaigns.

One of the tools used by Google Analytics is Google Adwords. With this service, it is possible to get high search engine rankings to your site. This is because google Adwords takes note of the major keywords in the website, and guarantees that your website appears in all search engine results.

There are other benefits that Google Analytics offers like:

1)Unlike other expensive visitor tracking services, it is free. This helps put Google Analytics at the top of the list.

2)Google Analytics helps find out where visitors tend to leave the check out and sign up process in the site. With this information, amendments can be made to modify the sign up process and make it more user friendly.

3)Google Analytics helps you find the pages and links in the website that visitors click on the most. With this information, you can improve the pages and position them and their links appropriately.

4)Google Analytics has a wonderful feature where you can also find out which site your website visitor had logged on before visiting your site.

5)You are offered visitor segmentation where you know how many new and returning website users there are to your website. You are also provided geographical information of the visitor and the referral source used by them.

6)Google Analytics offers not only search engine marketing media, but also helps in the tracking of other non-search engine marketing media.

7)On the overall, with the help of Google Analytics, it is possible to gain more customers if the results it provides are used wisely.

8)Google Analytics is a very easy and convenient service to use that is rather straightforward to use. There is no need in wasting time waiting for results.

9)If you own many websites, there is no need of logging in multiple times. With a single login, it is possible to keep a track on multiple websites.

So it can be seen that Google Analytics is a service that all webmasters should not forsake, but use to enhance the performance of the site on the internet.

Top 10 Google Analytics Questions

Source: LunaMetrics

Question #1: Can’t I reprocess the data in some way? Sorry. Google Analytics doesn’t let you go back and reprocess. A very best practice is to think about your needs while you are setting up your analytics, and try to anticipate the future. This includes creation of a profile for every important campaign that you run, whether you define “campaign” as a Google AdWords campaign, a banner ad campaign, or an email campaign.

Question #2: I don’t know how to set up links in my newsletter. Or, I don’t know how to set up links in the paid search for non-Google search engines. Answer: Google Analytics has a nice linkbuilder tool to solve this problem, but I like ROI Revolution’s better. It is more intuitive, and it doesn’t have any typos . You can use the linkbuilder to code the links in any of your marketing campaigns — your email marketing, your Yahoo campaigns, your banner ads. (You don’t have to code Google AdWords, the default in AdWords is auto-tagging — it codes for you.) Once external links are coded, they’ll talk to your GA.

Question #3. Why can’t I get rid of the site overlay? You’ll need to clear your cookies. The Site Overlay activates if the GA tracking code sees the “GASO” cookie when you visit your website. Just use Firefox, choose Tools>Options>Show cookies and type in GASO. Delete that cookie.

Question #4. Why is my site overlay broken? If you make any changes to your Request URI — for example, if you ask to only see page titles and not /mypage.com — the site overlay will not work for the profile where you have the changes made. You should set up a clean profile without those changes. (To be honest, I feel like the site overlay is just about always broken, and I am awed when I see people ask questions about why they can’t get a specific piece of data from it. )

Question #5. My AdWords used to be linked to one GA account. I unlinked them, but now I can’t relink them, for some reason, to the correct account. Why? Answer: Relinking a previously linked AdWords account has to be done by Google. Submit a support ticket and they’ll get right one it. GA knows that you can’t do it without their help, and they are pretty responsive to this problem, I hear.

Question #6. My site has a new name. How should I handle my analytics? Answer: GA doesn’t really care what the name of your site is. So you can take your previous code and put it on your new site. But why would you want to do that? Unless the pages match perfectly (example: you kept the same site but moved from .asp to .php), you will really be comparing apples and oranges. Why don’t you just create a new profile in the same account and put that new code on your new site?

Question #7: Why is my own site my top referring source? Why is it even in my list of referring sources? Answer: Probably because you have more than one domain (for example, you are using a third party shopping cart) and you didn’t take the time to learn how to do the cross-domain tracking. Or because you have an old domain that you are redirecting to your new domain, and you are doing the redirect with javascript intead of with a server side redirect.

Question #8: Can’t I get conversion numbers instead of conversion percentages? Answer: Well, you can get them in the Total Conversions report, but you probably want them in the traffic report. And you can get them by a) pulling out your calculator and multiplying or b) dumping it all into excel and multiplying.

Question #9: Can I mix the secure code and the regular code? Google Analytics has a regular form of code (that includes, but is not limited to, the line http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js — and they also have the secure code, which uses the secure version of that, https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js

There are three ways that you can do this:

Option I) Since the name of your site is probably http://www.mysite.com, you are probably tempted to tell GA that when you sign up. This will give you the non-secure code. You can put it on all of your pages (even the secure pages), but it will generate a security error, possibly scaring off potential customers. So, Option I is a lousy idea.

Option II) You can follow the same instructions as above, but go in to the secure pages and be sure to change http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js to be https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js

Option III) Create a new profile, and pretend that your whole site is secure. To do that, choose the https beginning. GA will then automatically generate secure code for you, which you can put on your whole site. Using the secure site on all your pages - http and https alike — does not matter and will not affect your data. GA will not care that your site is mostly an http site.

Question #10) Why can’t I see the past the question mark in my referrers report? Answer: I really don’t have an answer. I would love if someone else would weigh in on this topic.

Bonus: How do I get the IP addresses of the visitors? Answer: you cannot, personally identifiable information is against GA’s terms of service.

Some Tips To Optimize Landing Page

1. Have a Clear and Direct Headline
Your landing pages should designed so the headline is first thing a user sees upon landing. First impressions on landing pages are as important as the offline world. Make sure the headline is a direct and simple statement of what the user is trying to accomplish. The goal of the headline is to bridge the moment of recognition so the user understands that the rest of the page content is aligned with completing their goal.

2. Place High Value on Whitespace
Users do not read all the text on a web page. Users scan the text and take away only certain elements that they use to make a decision if the page is relevant to their goal or not. Clean use of space allows users to scan and absorb key messages.

3. Deliver Your Value Proposition with Short Direct Messaging
Your value props should all be the answers to “why?” Keep them limited to three or four bullet points and don’t mince words. This is no time to get cute either. If users can’t quickly and easily understand the benefits of you product or service they will not hesitate to click the back button.

4. Have a Persuasive Message Directly Above the Call to Action
Every great salesman has a message they use to persuade prospects on the fence. Think of your landing page as your online salesman. Make sure you have one final strong persuasive message above the call to action. I find that bandwagon messages can increase user confidence and usually perform very well. An example: “Join the thousands of people that use…”

5. Large Red Buttons Rule
Tell your brand team to go to hell and throw your styleguide out the window. Red buttons can by themselves raise your conversion rate. Green can be good as well but most times in our testing if color matters it is red that wins. Also, don’t skimp on button size. Make users notice where the button is upon landing. Location matters as well but that’s something that needs to be tested on each page.

6. Call to Action Copy Matters
While direct messages can be very effective in the body of the copy direct messages in the call to action can be a turnoff. Words like “Buy,” “Add to Cart” or “Subscribe” that message commitment and a process can lower conversion rates. Softer calls to action like "Try it Now" that message immediacy (Now), but in a risk free way (Try it) can end up improving conversion by getting more users into the funnel.

7. Trust and Security are Still Incredibly Persuasive
Brand, trust and security icons as well as testimonials deliver confidence messages that can have a tremendous impact on conversion. Despite the fact that we are about 10 years into the commercial web, users on even the largest sites and brands in the world are influenced by these messages and images. You can see in this case study the impact that the Verisign and eTrust logo had on revenue per visitor for Audible.com.