The Need for Google Analytics for Your Website in 2022
In this guide, we are going to walk you through everything related to Google Analytics and why you need it for your website.
According to Philip Kotler, ‘selling aims to satisfy a customer's need and marketing aims to figure out his need.’ These pearls of wisdom by the father of marketing are prevalent even in today’s era.
However, with the onset of digital marketing, identifying and predicting customer needs accurately has become more accessible. Since in digital marketing, you can use analytic tools like Google Analytics to understand how your customers think and react to your marketing strategies.
And when speaking about digital marketing, we cannot leave your business website out of the conversation. Since it is the face of your business in the online world, analyzing your website through Google Analytics will give you significant insights into your customer’s expectations and needs.
Before we get into greater details like why you need Google Analytics for your website and how to use it, let us understand what google analytics is.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is Google’s web analytics platform that was launched in 2005. Since then, it has grown significantly and has become the single most used analytics tool in history, with a market share of 82%. Google Analytics is applied to 10 million websites to track the traffic on them. It helps identify how much traffic your website witnessed and various demographics like the language they used, age range, and gender.
Why Should You Add Google Analytics to Your Website in 2022?
Google Analytics may look simple, but the amount of data it collects is massive. On top of that, it converts the data into various quantitative metrics that you can use to measure your performance in different segments of your marketing strategies like paid ads, social media, and SEO.
Here are five reasons why you should integrate Google Analytics into your website:
Google Analytics can determine where the visitor first arrived on your website by clicking on paid Ads, searching on a search engine, or through your social media channels. This data can explain how each segment performs and what needs to improve.
With the help of Google Analytics, you can know what visitors are doing on your website rather than who just visited. Google Analytics provides metrics such as bounce rate, pages/sessions, average session duration, new visitor conversion, average visitor conversion, and even what they looked for on your website. This data helps you identify which visitors are actually converting and bringing business.
It is essential to understand which device your audience uses to make your website more responsive and optimized for different screen sizes. Most people rely on smartphones for surfing; however, a segment of the population uses desktops, laptops, and tablets. Google Analytics can help you identify if your mobile website is functioning up to the mark and do you need to make it more friendly for other devices as well.
This is by far the most crucial reason why you should include Google Analytics in your website. Google Analytics collects various demographics such as age range, gender, and interests of your website visitors. It helps you in different marketing decisions, like:
- It helps determine which social media platform you should focus more on. For example, if you are getting the most conversion visitors from Facebook and least from Twitter, you can focus more on expanding your Facebook reach and take a back step from Twitter.
- Google Analytics can quickly tell you which is your most shared and viewed content on your website. It can be your FAQ page or about us, or one of your most relevant blog posts. Whatever it is, it can give you an idea of what a visitor is looking for the most when scrolling through your website. You can use that as a yardstick to create more engaging content for your website.
- You can also track your business goals through the Google Analytics dashboard, which gives you a holistic view of whatever is going on with your business. It helps you determine what changes need to be made to your current strategies to work better in the future.
How to Add Google Analytics to Your Website
Once you have decided to integrate your website with Google Analytics, the next step is to figure out how to do it. Here are the steps that you need to follow:
1. Sign Up to Google Analytics
The first thing you need to do is create a Google Analytics account for your business by signing in to Google Analytics Homepage. You need to select the free version (Yes, Google Analytics also comes with a premium version that offers added features). See various columns that you need to fill, such as your account name, data sharing settings, and website information.
2. Add the Tracking ID to Your Website
After the sign-up formalities are finished, Google Analytics will provide you a tracking ID that you need to add to all the website pages you want to track. This part is tricky if you don’t have CMS system knowledge; therefore, we recommend you take help from professionals to get it right. If your website is set up on WordPress, you can use tools like Yoast to get the job done.
3. Add Users to Google Analytics
Once you have added the tracking ID to your website, the next step is to add other users to your Google Analytics through admin account user management. It is essential because it allows you to delegate access to various people working on the account and controls the access they have to the data by limiting the permissions you give to each user.
You can find detailed information on the steps to follow here.
Once you have finished this step, you are all set to track the traffic on your website. However, simply adding the analytics isn’t enough. You need to use that data for your business. And that’s where the Google Analytics reports come into the picture.
What are the Various Google Analytics Reports?
You can pull up various reports from your Google Analytics, each displaying multiple segments of your website. They are:
It is one of the major reports that you can pull up from your Google Analytics. It has 15 sub-sections, each giving you information like who visited your website over how long they stayed, and about visitors that came to your website. This report tells you who your audience is and what they are looking for so you can make your marketing strategies accordingly.
Another essential report that should regularly pull from your Google Analytics dashboard is the traffic acquisition report. This report tells you from which source you are getting more visitors, whether they came to your website through paid Ads, or your social media channels, or through referrals. This report is highly crucial as it gives a tangible form to your marketing efforts by letting you know which ones are bringing business.
Behavior reports are a combination of various reports which tell your audience’s reaction to your website. It includes bounce rate reports, keyword analytics reports, content efficiency reports, site speed overview, exit rate reports, and others. All these reports act as a summation of your performance and give you great insights into your website’s performance.
Wrapping Up
On a concluding note, it is all about understanding your client’s and customer’s interests so that you can deliver what they want from your business. And Google Analytics is an exceptional tool to achieve that. It also helps you understand where you stand in the market and what you need to do to better your business. So, now is the time to use this innovative tool to your advantage.