Are you taking advantage of one of the most powerful and opportunistic business tools on the web?
According to Tech Target, Google Analytics (GA4) offers statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing campaigns. It’s part of the Google Marketing Platform and is free to those who have a Google account.
In short, Google Analytics reports up to 200 different metrics based on your website performance. That includes measurements such as:
-where traffic comes from
-how many visitors are driven by marketing campaigns
-visitor behavior
-location of visitors
-and many more
You should also know that Google has updated to its next generation of analytics, which they call Google Analytics 4 (GA4). GA4 is Google’s new and improved property designed to collect and measure data. In turn, this allows you to use it to improve your business opportunities. This new version can:
collect both website and app data to better understand the customer journey
use events instead of session-based data
control privacy with cookie-less measurement, and behavioral and conversion modeling
If you currently own a Google Universal Analytics property (now considered legacy), be sure to upgrade to the new GA4 because Google will no longer support it as of July 1, 2023.
Here's 3 steps to get started:
1. Be sure your website includes a GA4 code for data collection on each page so that you can track visitors and their behavior. Here’s how (scroll to Set Up Data Collection section).
2. Setup your GA4 account to create a performance report that is relevant to your needs. Here’s how.
3. Then setup an automated report that will send you your analytics on a weekly or monthly basis. Here’s how.
If you run a Google advertising campaign to your website, for the best performance insight, link your GA4 account to your Google Ads account so you can start tracking conversions. Here’s how.
All this data is at your disposal. But what do you do with it? The short answer is to use it to identify hot areas of your website and possibly expand on them. By seeing what users do on your site you can identify what's working and what's not – and build on your successes. Not the audience you wanted visiting your site? Change some of your keywords and messaging focus, then continue to monitor and adjust.
If you’re not using this powerful and free GA4 tool, it’s time to begin. We can help you.