Three tips to take your use of Google Analytics to the next level.

Google Analytics: Three Steps to Awesome

There are three key habits you need to adopt to get the most out of Google Analytics. Unfortunately, most people don’t follow them. They are simple but powerful: adopting these three habits will take your use of Google Analytics from ‘huh?’ to ‘wow!’

Set goals in Google Analytics to track your most valuable visitorsSet Up Goals.

You have a website for a reason. To get donations, sell tickets to events, sell products. Make sure you set up goals in Google Analytics to track when a website visitor does exactly what you want them to do.
Once you have set up goals, you can quickly tell where your really valuable visitors (donors, supporters, customers) come from and start experimenting with how to get more of them.   Learn more about goals.

Track your outreach in Google Analytics to find out what's working and what's not.
Track Your Outreach.

You do a lot to promote your site. You send out emails. You tweet. You post to Facebook. You run online ads. You get my point.
To get the most out of Google Analytics you must track each of these outgoing links. It means that after all the dust settles, you can see right away which of your promotional efforts are getting results, and what needs to be improved.   Learn more about campaign tracking.

 

Think of the visitors to your site in terms of audience segments that have different needs.Segment your audience.

Each of your visitors is unique. Like a snowflake. But it helps to group them in terms of ‘segments’: things you know about them based on where they come from and what they do on your site.

Visitors from Facebook will act differently from people on your email list, and first time visitors differently than folks who show up every week.

Set up Google Analytics to track these segments so you can start thinking in terms of your different audience segments and how you can make them happy. Learn more about segments in Google Analytics

Over the past two years I have taught dozens of people how to make the most of Google Analytics. I have put the key learnings into this quick, free tutorial where we focus on these three techniques.