Here are the top 10 reasons why you should consider using Google Analytics.

1. 10 Reasons to Use
Google Analytics
By: Errett Cord
Email: ecord@ecord.us
Twitter: @errettcord

2. One : It is Free
Google Analytics is a very comprehensive website
analytics package that provides a user friendly design
interface. The charts are easy to understand and make
data collection and analysis much efficient. Providing
business owners and clients with meaningful
information is a necessary business function but when
Google Analytics is free to everyone, all you need is a
Google Account?

3. Two: GA Interface
Google Analytics can be displayed to provide easy to
understand data formats, charts and graphs with several
view options for every report. If you have no statistical or
analytical background, you can easily understand the good
and bad and measure performance improvements or losses
due to the data or site comparison chart options. Google
Analytics also shows the good numbers in Green and the
bad (negative) numbers in red.

4. Third: Connect to Adwords
Google Analytics and be connected to your Adwords account.
Having ecommerce turned on and applying your cost data, you
can view your cost and revenue associated with every Adwords
campaign and Ad group. This will make ROI analysis much easier.
You can sort your groupings by goal or Ecommerce conversion
rates, or even the provided ROI field and focus on the strong
performers or remove the weak ones. The ROI field will not take
into consideration the cost of goods sold, so you may need to
export to excel. Still using GA will make this process much more
efficient.

5. Four: Customize GA
The Google Analytics tracking code is embedded in pages
you’re tracking. You can setup the session timeout, campaign
timeout, set keywords to ignore, add organic sources and set
custom campaign fields. Using filters will allow you to
include/exclude based on dozens of options giving you the
ability to provide profiles as specific as you need. The GA
standard tracking script for most businesses will meet their
tracking requirements.

6. Five: Event Tracking
Event Tracking is a new feature that provides a new level of
flexibility in Google Analytics. Event tracking allows for tracking
actions associated with flash objects, dynamic rotating content,
movie players, interactive buttons and complex forms. You can
create custom tracking solutions for any type of activity on a site
and associate site usage. Ecommerce and goal conversion data
can provide a whole new level of traffic and visitor usage data
analysis.

7. Six: Support
There are many support options available from reading one
of the Google help forums, reading one of the many books
available, engaging in one of the several Webinars, or
consulting with a Google Analytics Qualified Individual
(GAIQ) to help you setup a custom solution, interpret and
understand meaningful data, or to provide ongoing
consultative support. Because Google Analytics is free,
there is a large community of users and you are not likely to
be the first to encounter an issue and chances are high
there is already some great information available online to
help you.

8. Seven: Segmentation
Google Analytics provides a solid understanding your
website’s user behaviors. There are several ways to
segment traffic but the easiest is with the user-defined
segmentation Google Analytics provides almost out of the
box. There are additional snippets of code that have to be
embedded and you can setup filters to isolate these
segmentations once triggered providing you with detailed
unique website stats for these variations in your users. This
provide you with the ability to measure testing and
marketing success at a very detailed level.

9. Eight: Search
Google Analytics newest feature is the ability to track your
internal site search. This tool will provide you an
understanding of what your visitors are trying to find on your
site. As with most of the reports in Google Analytics, you can
associate goal and ecommerce data by selecting one of the
several reporting views. This will provide you with a source of
keywords that you insight to your site’s ability to convert from
your of your campaigns. The site search feature also allows
you to adjust your internal navigation and create a more user
friendly website that will make conversions a little easier for
your visitors.

10. Nine: Benchmarking
Google Analytics can provide insight with the beta
benchmarking feature. This feature allows you to compare
key performance indicators with like businesses in similar
industries so you can benchmark your success against your
competitors. This benchmarking feature builds value as more
people sign up for it because your ability to specify your
industry will become much more in accurate. You can see
your traffic, bounce rates, pageviews, and other great metrics
in relation to competitors to determine your weak or strong
areas and can build website optimizer testing to strengthen
you site’s presence on the web.

11. Ten: Everyone uses GA
Google Analytics has 69% of the analytics market share.
Google Analytics provides a high level of insights to your
competition. If you aren’t using a detailed analytics package
such as Google Analytics with a resource allocated towards
analyzing it and taking action, you are handicapping your
company’s web capabilities and might as well start handing
over market share. Contact me for help with Google
Analytics.

12. Connect
By: Errett Cord
Email: ecord@ecord.us
Twitter: @errettcord
Website: www.cordstrategies.com