What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics in 2024 : Google Analytics is a Web analytics service from Google that involves monitoring and assessment of activities on a website or app for their owners and marketers. It provides a finer insight into visitor behavior, sources of traffic, conversion, and user engagement. Using Google Analytics, businesses can know exactly how users interact with their site, which pages users most visit, where in the world visitors are coming from, how long visitors have been on a given page, and if some action is concluded, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.
Google Analytics is a free website-tracking tool of data regarding user interaction with a website. All this information is then taken by Google Analytics and organized in reports that can be segmented by users, sessions, and events.
Why to use Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a website which enables users to see their website traffic related reports and helps in tracking and understanding that how users interact with their sites. There are multiple reasons to use Google Analytics, which are given below:
- Complete Data Analysis: Google Analysis let you understand the number of visitors, their locations, and the devices they use and it tracks how users interact with your site, including page views, time spent on pages, and navigation paths.
- In-Depth Audience Information: Google Analytics lets you know about the audience’s age, gender, and interests.
- Campaign Measurement: Google Analytics determines which marketing channels are driving traffic like from; organic search, social media, email campaigns etc. It also evaluates the benefits of paid advertising campaigns through detailed measurement
- Custom Reports: Google Analytics provides you customizable dashboards to view basic measurements at a glance and built reports according to your specific needs to analyze data.
- Cost-Effective: Google Analytics has a lot of complete features, all for free, in such a way that any business could afford it.
- SEO Insights: Google Analytics lets you understand how search engines rank your website, and find out the specific keywords that really drive traffic. It gives information about which other external, non-search engine websites are sending visitors to your site.
- Amalgamation with other tools: With the help of Google Analytics you can smoothly integrate with Google Ads to track and optimize ad performance.
Reporting in Google Analytics
There are various types of reports which Google Analytics provides for insight of website performance, user behavior, and marketing effectiveness. Here are the different report list given below:
- Real-Time Reports: It monitors live user activity on your site, including active users, pageviews, and top active pages. It also shows where current visitors are located geographically. It helps in understanding the active sources of traffic. It views which pages users are currently visiting.
- Conversions Reports: Google Analytics provides detailed reports on goal completions, goal value, and goal conversion rates. It provides comprehensive reports on transactions, product performance, sales performance, and more.
- Custom Reports: It creates customizable dashboards to view key metrics at a glance. and build reports for specific needs, allowing for the combination of various metrics and dimensions. It has feature to save frequently used reports for easy access. You can also create shortcuts for quick access to specific reports or views.
Advantage of Google Analytics
There are multiple advantages of Google Analytics that helps users to get complete information of their sites. Here are the list given below which describes the various advantages of Google Analytics which makes it essential to use Google Analytics:
- Complete Data Collection: Google Analytics provides detailed data collection about who visits your sites, with their demographics, interests, and behaviors. It also shows that from where your traffic is coming as organic search, paid ads, social media, and referrals.
- Performance Evaluation: Google Analytics evaluates performance indicators (KPIs) like conversions, sign-ups, and sales. For Ecommerce sites it also tracks product performance, revenue, and transactions for online stores.
- Privacy and Data Security: Google Analytics has tools and features to ensure your data collection agree with privacy regulations like GDPR.
- Cross-Device Tracking: Google Analytics tracks users over different devices to get a complete image of their interaction with your site.
- Helps in Decision Making: Google Analytics reports help in making decisions based on solid data rather than assumptions. With Google Analytics report you can determine the most effective strategies for your website and marketing engagement.
- Enhanced Data Presentation: Google Analytics provides built-in charts, graphs, and tables to present data clearly. It also has features which allows you to export data to various formats (e.g., CSV, Excel, Google Sheets) for further evaluation and sharing.
Limitations of Google Analytics
Although Google Analytics has multiple advantages, it has some limitations which are as follows:
- Data Sampling Method: When the datasets are larger, Google Analytics would use data sampling method which has less accurate reports.
- Privacy Matters: Robust privacy legislation, like the GDPR or CCPA, restricts both the amount and type of data that can be collected and might require adjustments to your data collection.
- Difficulty in Usage: Google Analytics can be overwhelming for beginners for its complexity and the large amount of data it provides. It needs considerable time and expertise to master advanced features.
- Accuracy Problems: Google Analytics provides accurate insights, yet some users may block cookies or use ad blockers, which can lead to incomplete data.
- Data Saving Limits: Google Analytics has limits on data storage, which may require careful planning to ensure that the important data is preserved.
- Customization Controls: The number of custom metrics and dimensions you can create are limited in Google Analytics.
- Limited Customer Support for Free Users: Free users may depends on community forums and documentation, which may not always provide timely or comprehensive assistance.
Is Google Analytics free?
Mainly Google Analytics is free for use. The Google Analytics free version has access to all basic tools and features that an individual would need for tracking and analysing their sites. However, if you want more premium features for viewing the reports of your site, you can upgrade to paid version of Google Analytics which is called as “Google Analytics 360“.
The free version of Google Analytics is sufficient for many users who have small or medium organizations, while larger organizations with complex data needs more advanced reports may find the additional features and support of Google Analytics 360.
How to Setup Google Analytics?
To setup Google Analytics for your site, follow the given steps:
- First go to official website of Google Analytics and sign in your Google account.
- Click “Create Account.”
- Give an account name, then create a property for your website or app.
- Select your data sharing settings.
- Install the Tracking Code.
- In the Admin section, select your property, then “Data Streams” > “Web”.
- Click the data stream for your website.
- Under “Google tag”, click “View tag instructions”.
- Select “Install manually” and copy the provided JavaScript code snippet.
- Paste this code in the top of the <head> section of your website’s HTML pages.
- Verify Installation.
- Use Google Tag Assistant—a Chrome extension—to verify that the tracking code is installed correctly.
- Set up Goals—Optional but Recommended
- It provides a definition of what the desired user actions on a website are: to track purchases, form submissions, or people viewing a particular page.
- In Admin, choose “Goals” and create new goals in relation to your objectives.
- Link to Google Search Console.
- Go to “Search Console” in the Admin section and connect your property.
In a few days, you will see that data starts flowing into your Analytics account. Use the different reports and tools to get a sense of your website’s performance.
Conclusion
In this blog, we have given the complete information about Google Analytics, how to use and how it helps in tracking your site. I hope you have find this blog useful. If you want to get more such information related to digital marketing, then please visit our blog.