Intro to Google Analytics

From the Small Business Growth Strategies Series

Presented by

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble

is I don't know which half.” - John Wanamaker

Sound familiar?

The data Wanamaker was lacking is now readily available, thanks to

analytics tools!

As a small business owner, you should be measuring everything you can, and most business decisions

should be based on data.

Google Analytics is the most popular. Allows you to measure:

•  Visits •  Page Views

•  Bounce Rates •  Time Spent on Site

•  Marketing Campaigns •  & More

Analytics Lingo

Unique Visitors

Refer to the number of distinct individuals viewing a website. For example, if one person views your website twenty-five

times, it counts as twenty-five views but only one unique visitor.

Bounce Rate

Calculated by measuring the number of people who leave a website after viewing

the first page divided by the total number of website visitors. Rule of thumb: the lower

the bounce rate, the better.

Conversions

Logged when a visitor completes a goal you’ve established. (Goals and Funnels are

explained later on in the newsletter.)

Types of Traffic

•  Direct– Visitors enter URL directly into their browser.

•  Referred – Directed from another website. •  Search Engine– Resulting from showing up

in search engine results pages.

Audience Overview

The Audience tab allows you to

determine where your visitors live,

their age and gender, how they got

to your site, what devices they’re using and much

more.

The Overview page shows you statistics like the number of unique visitors, average visit duration and bounce rate.

Demographics and Interests break down the age, gender and

interests of your viewers. This

information is critical to understanding your customers.

As you go through the other sections, you’ll learn more and more about your visitors.

For example, in the Geo section you’ll be able to see

where your visitors live.

If you’re a local brick and mortar store, it’s important to have a local audience. If you’re an ecommerce platform, you’ll likely want a more geographically

diverse customer base.

Campaigns

Goals

Google Analytics is all about measuring visitor activity, so naturally you want to set

up Goals in order to measure your success.

Goals

Every time a user completes a defined goal, a Conversion is logged on your account.

Google breaks goals up into these four

categories.

!

Goals

Click on Admin ! Goals ! New Goal.

For this example, the full URL destination will be www.NewSmallBusiness.com/contact.html.

Goals Step 1

You need to choose the type of goal you’re setting up. For this example, we set up a destination goal. Since our goal is to get more visitors to the contact

page, we simply named it that.

!

Goals Step 2

Choose “Equals to” and enter /contact.html, the

page we’d like visitors to end up on.

!

Goals Step 2

There is also a Value option for correlating monetary value with goals. If new customers spend an average

of $100 and 10% of new visitors end up becoming customers, give each visit a $10 value.

Funnels

The paths that you want visitors to take are referred to as Funnels. For this example, let’s say we want a visitor to go from the

Home page to the About page to the Contact page.

!

Funnels

You’ll notice that the Required option is off. This is something that often confuses

people. If you turn the required button on, it means that visitors must start from the Home page to be included in the funnel.

Funnels

Now click on the Reporting Tab at the top of your Google Analytics page. Go to

Conversions and click on Funnel Visualization to check your progress. There’s no data yet since we just set it up, but this is what the

funnel looks like.

There’s no data yet

since we just set it up, but this is what the funnel looks like.

!

Analytics & AdWords

Analytics & AdWords

Linking Google Analytics to your AdWords account (covered in the last newsletter) will automatically track the behavior of visitors who end up on your website as a result of

AdWords campaigns.

Analytics & AdWords

If you’re interested in linking the two accounts, Google describes the

easy 12-step process here.

Conclusion

Many of the problems businesses, particularly small businesses, have historically struggled with can be

simplified, and in many cases solved, by understanding customer tendencies.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools for finding

and analyzing that information.

Conclusion

As always, we hope this information has been valuable and that this series is helping your

small business grow.

If you’d like suggestions for more specific resources or have any questions, don’t hesitate

to shoot us an email.

Conclusion

“We  hope  you  found  this  informa2on  useful.  If  there  are  any  other  topics  

you’d  like  to  see  us  cover,  please  let  us  know.  And  if  taking  this  approach  helps  your  small  business  succeed,  we’d  love  to  hear  about  it.  You  can  reach  us  at  support@acuityscheduling.com!” Acuity Scheduling

@AcuitySchedulin

Acuity Scheduling is an online scheduling platform that saves thousands of small businesses time by allowing their customers to book appointments online, on their own time,

at any time, from anywhere in the world. For more information about services and pricing, visit

AcuityScheduling.com.

About Acuity Scheduling