There are several tools out there for tracking your website’s data, including how much traffic it gets, where the traffic comes from, and other types of statistics. Google Analytics is by far the most widely used website analysis tool. Offered by search engine behemoth Google, the tool has more than 80 percent of the market share, and it is used on around 55 percent of the 10,000 most popular websites.
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What Is Google Analytics? A Background:
Google Analytics is essentially the descendant of Urchin on Demand, which was developed by Urchin Software Corp. Google acquired the company — and by extension, the software — in April 2005. Seven months later, Google introduced its version of Urchin, which was eventually discontinued on March 28, 2012. Since 2006, Google Analytics has been available to all website owners, including those who do not use the company’s advertising program, which is called Google AdWords.
Google Analytics is particularly targeted at marketers and webmasters who wish to increase their level of conversion of visits to sales or improve their customer’s overall visitor satisfaction with the website.
Function:
To use Google Analytics, you paste a snippet of JavaScript code to your website pages. This code is the tool’s tracking device; it collects visitor data and transfers it to a Google data collection server. The tracking code can differentiate between first-time visitors and returning ones, timestamp the visits, record the lengths of time spent on the site, and take note of the visitors’ geographical locations.
It can also determine what directs visitors towards your site: such sources include search engines, banner ads, email messages, etc. With the aforementioned capabilities or features, you can distinguish between pages that are doing well and those performing poorly.
Layout:
Google Analytics presents your traffic data using pie charts, bar charts, and line charts. Google integrated Google Analytics Content Experiments — formerly known as Google Website Optimizer — into the traffic analysis tool to improve less effective web pages or website content.
If you integrate Google Analytics with Google AdWords, you can tweak certain aspects of your online marketing campaigns in accordance with your traffic findings. Reports vary depending on a site’s purpose. For instance, an e-commerce site would rely on reports that track transactions and revenue, among other commerce-related aspects.
Limitations:
Despite its popularity, Google Analytics does have a few limitations. Ad filtering programs and code-restricting extensions like Adblock and NoScript hamper complete tracking of website traffic. Moreover, free software like Tor enables online anonymity, making it difficult to collect accurate geographical data.
Mobile App:
Although Google Analytics is traditionally used on computers, there is a version for smaller, mobile devices called Mobile App Analytics. This app is tailored for the site’s mobile traffic base. A unique feature of Mobile App Analytics is Google Play Integration, which tracks how visitors discover your app at the Google Play Store.
Premium:
Google Analytics is a free download at the tool’s website. However, if you need more sophisticated traffic analysis, there’s Google Analytics Premium. The packages consist of enterprise-level, secure and reliable data, which includes 1 billion hits per month, up to 3 million data rows in unsampled reports, four-hour fresh data, and 24/7 support and data access.
A flat annual fee of $150,000 in U.S. dollars covers the Premium package. In addition to Google, you can get Google Analytics Premium from any of 20 authorized resellers, such as Analytics Pros, BGT Partners, eComIQ, Maass Media, and Web Analytics Demystified.
About the Author:This article was written by blogger Juliette Kumari Kern. She has an enthusiasm for sharing the knowledge of blogging and SEO with those who are new to blogging and web based business. She recommends exceptional corporate logo design as a means to make your business’s page unique
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