Now that you have Google Analytics set up and gathering data, you will be able tell what is working for you and how people are finding your website. First go to the traffic sources from the dashboard in Analytics. Instantly, you can see how people find your site. Now let's take quick overview of the report I've been demonstrating from vacationtours.com.
At the top of the page you can change the date of the report. Defaults to 1 month from yesterday. The next section is a graph of visits. Day by day view of your visits is the default view of visits. Week and Month views are also available. If you launch a new ad campaign, you can use this as a barometer.
Traffic Sources Section
By default the tracking sources are distributed into 3 categories, Direct Traffic, Search Engines and Referring Sites. Google publishes it's API for traffic sources. You can configure options within your page tracker code. But this is a later topic. The sources do give you a good idea of how people arrive at your website. It is also configurable as part of ga.js, which might be beneficial for multi-domain websites. The idea is to get a sense of how people get to your site. Depending on your business the traffic patterns can be wide. A well known company like Ebay or Amazon may have a large pattern of direct traffic. Less known companies, probably will have a higher search engine results.
Top Traffic Sources
The top traffic sources will give you an idea how customers found your website. This area along with keywords section are two areas you will want to spent some time analyzing. It is from keywords that you will know how people find your site in what Google refers to organic searches. Think of organic searches like organic foods. Natural and very green for your checkbook. It is the way customers find you via search, and usually within the Google Triangle. If your not getting any keyword hits or organic searches then that is the place to start building a plan to improve. (And yes, another topic of discussion).
How are my ads doing?
All right so you are on a limited budget as are most small businesses. But you can still run ads. Some of these can be free, such as craigslist.org or even directory listings. Ads can be beneficial too! They are a quick way to boost traffic and site visibility. And with Google Analytics, you'll be able to measure the success/interest of an ad.
Analytics is a very valuable tool for any business, but especially small business. There a so many uses for analytics. It is a way of measuring a marketing campaign, product launch success, user analysis, globalization of your business and many other uses. Let me know your uses.
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