Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great, and free, resource for brands and marketers. The platform provides website analytics that allow users to review detailed metrics regarding their website. Google can help users understand when, where and how people are being referred to their site, bounce rate, conversion rate and user demographics, among many other options. These are useful tools when operating a website; having the information about how users interact with your site can allow you to make decisions about how best to optimize the site. 

Recently I began collecting information about this blog site with Google Analytics. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to collect much data. For the purpose of this discussion I will mainly be referencing Google's demo account. 

One report that is very helpful when managing a website is the audience overview. This provides a quick glance into the number of users, their activity on the page and demographics. 

This report provides a wealth of information in a glance, providing you with the bounce rate and the country from which users have been engaging with your site for example. This one report can help you understand how users are interacting with the site. 

Additionally, Google Analytics provides more information about user demographics. 

These charts show the age and gender of users from Google's demo site. This information can help marketers optimize their site to meet the wants and needs of the consumers on their sites. Understanding consumer demographics is an essential part of any marketing communication, and website development is no different. "Marketing professor Neil Kokemuller describes the process of marketing using the acronym S-T-P: segmenting, targeting, and positioning – and goes on to point out that demographics play a key role in the segmentation process. Knowing these demographics helps keep you from trying to sell winter coats in Death Valley, or using a tone-deaf marketing approach for Millennials" (Healey, 2019). 

Another interesting report from Google Analytics shows whether consumers are using a mobile device, desktop or tablet. Additionally, the analytics reports show that despite most of the users using a desktop device, the most revenue was generated from users on mobile devices. To marketers this may signal that the desktop web version of the site does not function as well as the mobile version, or that consumers visiting the site via a mobile device are more prepared to convert. Either way, the brand could begin to evaluate other web analytics to review the data in context and optimize its sites to better meet the needs of users. 

No one report can paint the full picture of how users are interacting and engaging with your site, but by reviewing individual analytic reports like the one above, it could provide you with a valuable place to begin researching. 

Finally, I would like to mention another report from Google Analytics that provides valuable information. The Site Content report shows you which pages on your site have been most and least successful. 

This report can help you to understand what content is resonating the most with the users on your site, and what content could potentially be dropped from the site altogether. 

There are many more reports on Google Analytics that provide great value and insight to anyone who is managing a website, the platform is certainly not limited to those that I have mentioned. Also, as with most things Google Analytics is not one size fits all. Which reports are most important will also depend on the goals of your organization and website. 

Ultimately, Google Analytics can and should be used to understand how and why consumers are interacting with your site. As previously mentioned, it is important to evaluate the data in context before jumping to conclusions, but gathering and evaluating this information affords marketers the opportunity to optimize its sites to improve the user's experience online and hopefully improve the company's bottom line. 

References:

Healey, C. (2019, February 26). Understanding Your Customers: The Important Role of Demographics -. Retrieved from https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/understanding-your-customers-the-important-role-of-demographics/.