Google Analytics remains the Gold Standard, a free Web analytics service. Anyone with a Google account can access and use Google Analytics to better understand its business market. The complex algorithms integrate metrics on your website’s traffic:

• count the number of visitors to the site and where they come from
• identify the websites and the marketing tactics that directed the traffic
• record which pages the visitors prefer and how much time they spend there  
• study how many visitors qualify as leads and how many of them convert to sales
• identifies the origin of these conversions and where they spent time on the website

A good reading of the Google Analytics will help any B2B improve its website’s speed, focus, and ROI.

With enough such data, you can make a real difference. But, Google Analytics can seem overwhelming to the business CEO with all its menus, charts, graphs, and reports. Basically, the information lies on two planes: the setup and the reporting. The reporting reads easily, but that depends on the more difficult setup. The setup should provide the key reports you need to develop your business and improve the website:

• Audience reporting will reveal considerable detail about your visitors. It “knows” what device the visitor used to access the site and from what geographic location. It identifies if they have visited there before and the geographic location.
• Demographics and Interests reports do not reveal personal information on the users, but they will make Google guesses on age, gender, and interests.
• Acquisition reports on the users’ means of arrival at your site. It helps to know if visitors arrive from within your site, a paid search, or social media link.
• Behavior analysis reports on what specifically visitors do on your pages. This tells you something about the pages where they spend the most time. It suggests there may be something engaging, attractive, and informative on those pages.
• Conversions reports display your most important data. The reports indicate which pages count in terms of sales closings. They direct you to optimize what is working and what you need to improve.

Google Analytics is “alive” with ingenuity and evolving metrics. It remains the operating standard for website success. Designing and developing your website to optimize and exploit those metrics takes the professional experience and support of Brand Anvil.