Track visitors with Google Analytics

Humans are just nosy by nature and that inherent trait extends to our Web sites; I wonder how many visitors I had. and What page did they look at.

The more you depend on your Web site for income the more important these questions become. To validate your Web site is being found I recommend implementing Google Analytics – a wealth of information regarding visitors becomes available and a whole new content strategy can be formulated.

So why is tracking visitor statistics so important to the success of a Web site?

Visits to your Web site

Analytics display visitor geographical location, the Web browser used, computer screen resolution, if JavaScript and Flash was enabled, their language and more. All of this is extremely useful to make sure your site is compatible with your audience. For instance if most of your visitors do not have Flash support, you should probably lose the Flash animation on your landing page you think is so cool – basically no one can see it! If most of your visitors are using computer monitors at 800 x 640 screen resolutions (not likely unless all of them use some type of Pad), you should ensure your design is compatible with that resolution or smaller.

While on your Web site

Analytics give you the tools to track what pages visitors view, how long they stay and what the bounce rate is (percentage of users who leave your site from the landing page). Using this information you can decrease the bounce rate and increase the depth of page views.

If you are constantly updating your Web site, which should always be the case, it is very important to exclude yourself from tracking data otherwise your statistics will quickly become padded. This can be accomplished rather quickly by creating a Filter to exclude your I.P. address – from that point on you will get ‘clean’ stats.

Time of day

By analyzing the time most visitors hit your site you can determine when to publish content. If the time zone conflicts with your awake time then you may need to schedule your content to be posted during those ‘hot’ hours.

Point of origin

Analytics show where visitors come from; search engine, direct link and referral link from another site. Not only does it display what percentage of visitors came from each of these sources but breaks it down by category. For example the search engine category shows which search engine brought the most traffic and what search term was used so you can improve ranking for that keyword. The break down of referral sites shows what site you need to work with the most – if your top referral source is Twitter then you need exclusive Twitter content to make that audience feel special. If your top referral source is an external Web site then you might consider a partnership (link exchange or similar).

Interaction with content

Google analytics show how visitors interact with your site content via percent of visitors that clicked on which links. By studying visitor interactivity you can work your content around those visitors.

With Google Analytics (or any stat tracking tool) Web owners can focus on strategies that work and eliminate strategies that do not.

If I built your Web site and you need a flexible way to track visitor data please contact me.