Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free online tool that allows website owners to track the behaviour of the visitors to their sites, thereby providing powerful data as to how to improve site performance in meeting business objectives.

The goal of Google Analytics is to get good value from it. Using the 10:90 rule - spend $10 on technology and $90 on people to interpret the data.

Avoid just tagging your website, you need someone to understand your business goals and help you interpret your data. Analyzing data takes a lot of business accumen and common sense.

Far too many companies do not invest in consulting to help them make the best of their data. The web is very complex and will remain so for a long time to come.

Video - Introduction To Google Analytics [7:51]

Google Analytics tells you exactly who's coming to your website and what pages they love to visit. Use this information to increase your website conversion rates and make more money

Other Google Data Focused Marketing Products

Google Analytics - Rules for Revolutionaries

Key Learnings

Reporting is not analysis - both of these activities take the same amount of time, but you need to choose between these. Avinash refers to reporting as 'dead trees'. If you actually want to get value from your data, then your analysts should only spend 20% of their time on getting data together and 80% time finding value for the business using unstructured analysis.

Features in Google Analytics

Visitor Statistics - source, volume, frequency,
Site Effectiveness - average pages viewed, time on site, bounce rate, return visitors
Content - keyword ranking
Campaign Tracking - using Goals and Link Tags, Google Analytics can track all types of online media including banner ads, referral links, email campaigns, and organic and paid search.

Google Analytics generally updates reports every 24 hours. This means that it could take 24 hours for data to appear in your account after you have first installed the tracking code.