This article will explain, as simply as possible, what Google Analytics is for absolute beginners! Read on to find out more about this incredible free to use marketing tool!
Google Analytics is a special tool, provided for free by Google which allows you to get information on who your site visitors are and how they are interacting with your website. It seems simple, but as you will see this is an incredibly complex tool which can be a powerful ally to your business.
How does Google Analytics work?
Google Analytics is a tool that needs to be ‘coded’ into your website. This means, when your site is built you set up a Google Analytics 4 account. This account can then be linked to your website by a website developer like Digital Paw Marketing Agency. This is done by adding computer code ‘into the backend’ of your website (that means the machine code that is written to make your website look and work the way it does).
If linking your website with Google Analytics is done correctly, then GA4 will provide you with a whole host of marketing funnel information.
What is the GA4 marketing funnel?
The GA4 marketing funnel describes the process of a person moving from being a potential client to ultimately a paying client. You can read about it in detail here but in short it is the ‘customer journey’. This is the journey of a person becoming aware of your business, moving to considering using you, to becoming a customer.
What does Google Analytics tell me?
GA4 helps us to understand behaviour. Ever get the feeling that Google is listening to you? Perhaps you often see adverts about things that you’ve recently searched? That’s largely because Google understands your behaviour in an extremely complex way.
OK, let’s get the elephant out of the room – we don’t know that Google aren’t listening, but they have assured us that they aren’t so let’s stick with that idea.
Right, so Google is watching your behaviour across your daily life. If you go on the web you are most likely using Chrome (2.65 billion of us do). And using your Google Android phone to do it – around 45.5% of the population of the planet. And if you’re searching for things, you use Google. And Google is watching all of that.
Google also has information feeding into it from Google Maps. Heck they even offer a little widget that can be added to shop doors to track customers. So they know what you do online, with the apps you use and where you go.
Add to that, the data sharing permissions used for things like free Wi-Fi which mean even if you’re not using a Google phone, your activity online is tracked too.
Google Analytics gives you a very focused insight in the sort of data that Google has, all based entirely on your business page.
What can I expect to see specifically?
Google Analytics 4 will offer you data in a WIDE variety of categories. Some of the key ones you will see are:
- Acquisition – data on how visitors have come to your website, this is important for you as a business as you’ll be able to use GA4 to make sure your marketing is as efficient as possible.
- Engagement – data on how visitors act on your page. What specific pages do they hit? How long do they spend on your site? What ‘events’ do they undertake?
- Monetisation – how do they spend their money on your site? If you are selling things online this is a critical element of GA4’s data studio.
- Retention – this will tell you about people who come to your site more than once. This is important in thinking about your marketing funnel. For example, if you offer a big ticket product or service, then potential clients are likely to spend longer in your marketing funnel in the consideration phase.
By using GA4 effectively, you will be able to see where is best to spend money to bring the right people to your website, how to get them to stick around and how best to get them to spend money with you.
Using Google Analytics 4 allows you to understand who your clients are and how they behave. For example, you may find out that your site attracts a significant proportion of males in the 40-50 category but they are not then present in your final customer lists.
By making use of GA4, you will be able to look at this group’s journey and do what you need to in order to convert them. Perhaps they don’t visit the page enough. Or perhaps they spend a long time on a web page which talks about a service that they are interested in but your call to action is lacking (meaning you possibly don’t have a clear enough button that users can click on).
Let’s Go GA4 Then
That all sounds great and useful, let’s do it. I’m in.
Setting up GA4 sadly isn’t just a case of setting up a login for Google Analytics unfortunately – although that is one of the steps! In order to do it properly you will need to speak to your existing web developer – or if you’re considering a new website or site overhaul, then speak to a brilliant website design agency like us here at Digital Paw.
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