A basic understanding of Google Analytics can help you improve your business
People usually purchase goods in stages and we could translate this into marketing language by using the concept of a purchase funnel. A purchase funnel represents the journey that a customer is taking from the moment that he is searching for a solution until he purchases the goods/ services in order to fulfill the need. There are different stages within the funnel that describe customer interactions.
A basic purchase funnel includes the following steps:
- Acquisition involves building awareness and acquiring user interest
- Behavior is when users engage with your business
- Conversion is when a user becomes a customer of your business
Using digital analytics you can measure many different aspects of the funnel, you can track what online behavior led to purchases, and use that data to make informed decisions about how to reach new and existing customers.
Different kinds of businesses can benefit from digital analytics:
- Publishers can use it to create a loyal, highly-engaged audience and to better align on-site advertising with user interests.
- E-commerce businesses can use digital analytics to understand customers’ online purchasing behavior and better market their products and services.
- Lead generation sites can collect user information for sales teams to connect with potential leads.
Now that we understood what kind of data is using Google Analytics let’s see how you can reach this data and how to get actionable information out of it. To track a website, you first have to create a Google Analytics account. So, Google Analytics is a platform that collects data and compiles it into useful reports. When the platform collects data, it packages that information up and sends it to Google Analytics interface to be processed into reports. When Analytics processes data, it aggregates and organizes the data based on particular criteria like whether a user’s device is mobile or desktop, or which browser they’re using.
But there are also configuration settings that allow you to customize how that data is processed. For example, you might want to apply a filter to make sure your data doesn’t include any data that you do not need or only includes data from a particular country or region that’s important to your business.
We will talk about the REPORTS section from your Google Analytics account. This is the most important area that you have to know. It is very important to understand what reports can do for you.
If you have a clear picture of what you need, what data is meaningful to your business, Google Analytics will help you a lot. Play with it, see where you find the data that you need, and what combination of data, “dimensions”, is best for you.
