Review of Google Analytics

One of the most important website tools to come out in recent years has been Google's Webmaster Tools and Google's Analytics.

"Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. Focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors."

I've implemented many tracking programs over the years, and can definitively say that this is the easiest and most helpful statistic tool being used on any of the websites I'm monitoring right now. If you are serious about your website's success, I suggest you click out of here and get your Analytics account set up ASAP.

Once you set up your account and add the tracking code (just a cut and paste job) to your site you have to wait about 24 hours for the results to start coming in. Your Executive Overview has great info that you can check daily.

• Visits and Pageviews


• Visits by New and Returning


• GeoMap Overlay


• Visits by Source

This at-a-glance page gives you quick information about your daily performance. You can see if any or all of your advertising campaigns are working, or if your site is stuck in a rut.

Their Marketing, Conversion and Navigational Analysis is invaluable. While you set up your account, you have the opportunity to tell the program what you want your visitors to do and see while they are at your website. Your reports will tell you if visitor action corresponds to your goals. Moreover, the reports do so clearly, without a lot of geek-speak.

One of my favorite reports is called "Site Overlay". Google shows you an image of your website with monitoring bars over your site's navigation. You can see the percentage of visitors that clicked on each link and actually follow a typical path through your site.

Some of the information has been surprising. We've found pages getting more attention than we ever expected and were able to add content and elements that helped the visitor and our bottom line. Sometimes, as developers, we are too close to see our website the way a visitor does.

Google offers a great video tour of the program. I won't bother you with my how-to, not when they do it so well. Knowledge is always power. The more I know about how my websites are actually used, the more effective I can be to provide the content and navigation to achieve my goals.