5 Reasons Every Webmaster Should Use Google Analytics

There are plenty of reasons that every single person designing a website needs some form of analytics. The simple reason that is when building a site and optimizing it to bring in different eyes and hold views on pages for a certain amount of time requires the insight only found with analytics. There are lots of different analytics options, but few places allow you to gain insight at a great price of Google Analytics. The reality is Google Analytics is a cost-effective solution that allows you to gain insight on how your site is working along with different areas that can help grow your site in the future.

The first step with any site builder, including WordPress, is getting Google Analytics on the site. There are several methods to do some. Some are just as simple as pasting in a certain code while others are a little more complex. Either way, setting up Google Analytics on WordPress or any other site builder is a critical step towards ensuring that you have the data you need to ensure your site is growing and has the ability to be monetized.

Knowing What People Do and How Long They Do It

When you have Google Analytics, at its most basic function, you are learning how many people are visiting your site and the average amount of time they are spending on your site. This may not seem like much, but when it comes to monetizing your site, this is a great tranche of information. Specifically, how can you use this information? Well, the first way is by making sure that you are pitching advertisers. Having the data at the tips if your fingers telling people that you have an increasing average number of visitors on your site that spend a certain amount of time on each page allows advertisers to see the value in your site.

The other reason it is important to know how long people are spending on the site is you learn if they are interested in your content or in clicking the links to the other content you have used to skyscraper your page. The time people spend on a page is indicative of the compelling nature of your content, so good content gets longer eyeballs, and these are easy metrics to utilize.

Timing

Google Analytics does not just tell you how many people are coming to your site and how long they are staying on the site, but you can drill down the data and find out when people are coming to the site. The difference in the peak times and the lulls allows you to plan your content. The key here is you do not want to release a blog post or new content as your site is peaking with visitors. It is better to do it during a lull, this way visitors that would normally come to your site have extra incentive, and they will be more inclined to share what they find.

The other thing that timing stats from Google Analytics will tell you is where people are from. For example, if you are a site in the United States, it makes sense that the overnight hours would not have much traffic. However, if you are looking to expand into the Asian market, the biggest increase in traffic you would want to see is the overnight numbers. This is an indicator that your Asian message is working, because that is where the traffic is coming from at that time of day.

How is Your Site Discovered?

This is one of those great things about Google Analytics – you can see how people are accessing your site and these sources tell you where your money is being well-spent or if you are wasting money – especially if spending on a referral service. There are several different ways you can source your incoming traffic. You can differentiate through direct links, search engine traffic, referral links. There is also the ability to distinguish between which search engines are sending you traffic. This means if Google's algorithm is more favorable than Yahoo's, you can make sure that your SEO is lining up better with Google's standards.

Understanding where your traffic is coming from helps you build out those funnels leading directly to your site.

Understanding Site Interactions

A key to making sure that your site serves the purpose of monetizing interactions is by having effective calls to action. There are many ways you can test how well your site converts visitors. One of the easiest ways is running A/B tests. You can change the content on the site so that it appears differently to different folks and then it is easy to go back into the site and take a look at the different performance levels of the other types of copy.

The key with the A/B test is that you can find out the most effective call to action and then use it throughout the page. This means a greater amount of conversions because you will have scientifically tested your hypothesis.

Cost… Or Lack Thereof

So, while this is not necessarily a technical benefit, for business people focused on the bottom line, Google Analytics is the best way to get drilled down technical data coming right to you at the lowest possible entry cost. The cost of Google Analytics? The answer is free. You get a whole host of services providing you with detailed insight onto your website's performance and its ability to be monetized without having to pay a dime. For people who love breaking down data and figuring out the best plan, using Google Analytics means that you have a system that provides you with amazing insight into your site's performance while saving money. Especially in the infancy of a site, you want to spend as little as possible and if you can avoid spending money and get a high level of service, the it behooves you to trust Google Analytics.