Why you should use Google Analytics
One of the secrets to success in internet marketing is to continually test what you are doing with a view to improving it. Subtle changes to a website can have quite a significant effect on, for example, sales conversion rates. A good example of this is heading color; many people, me included, have found that in general, but not always, copy with a red heading sells better than copy with a blue heading. However, each website is different so you must carry out tests (on all testable aspects of the website, not just heading color).
Google Analytics is a free, hosted service provided by Google that provides you with extensive information about the traffic visiting your websites. You can use some of the information provided by Google Analytics to measure the results of your tests.
Google Analytics is not the only solution: there are free and commercial alternatives. However, one significant advantage of using the Google Analytics system is that it can be linked to your Google AdSense and Google Adwords accounts.
Once you have signed up a website for Google Analytics, you simply add a snippet of code to each page of your website. I insert the code into the footer immediately before the </body> tag. As my footers are added automatically, I need only add the code in one place and it appears on every page of the website immediately.
Additional code may be required if you link to your Google AdSense account.
For more information, take a look at the Google Analytics website (www.google.com/analytics/). It is well worth taking the time setting up Google Analytics for all your websites and analysing the various reports available.
If you use Google AdSense ads on your pages, Google Analytics can tell you how much each page on your website is earning in AdSense revenue. This was not possible previously for large websites. You can then analyse high earning pages so that you can design more just like them.
Give it a try; it will improve your websites’ performance.
