Introduction to Google Analytics – Part 1

Google Analytics is a tracking tool that provides information about user engagement and behavior on the website. You can analyze your website’s statistical data to dramatically improve your visit rates, increase the number of orders and as a result, give you the chance to earn more money!

The great advantage is that Google Analytics provides free information about what your visitors search for, along with information about the functionality of your site. You don’t need to buy any complex statistical programs or pay high prices for experts to prepare a study. You can use Google Analytics by gathering information yourself, evaluating it, and then using it to increase the success of your site. This series will help you do just that!

How to link Google Analytics to Webnode

Logging into Google Analytics is very simple.  It’s enough to have an account (email) at Google. Then in your Webnode project, add the Google Analytics monitoring code which immediately begins to count visitor statistics for your site.

How to work with the data

Before we get to the list of what information can be found in Google Analytics data and how you can effectively use this data, we’ll inspect the data below and see how to work with it effectively, understand what it means, what conclusions to draw, and what steps to follow to improve the website. Just plain numbers cannot give you many conclusions. Only until you compare the selected time periods, can you see if your site is developing in the right or wrong direction.

• Follow the trends – The first thing you see after logging into Google Analytics is a graph of your site visitors from the last set period (usually one month or week). To be able to effectively work with the data, always monitor two periods of equal length. The best way is to follow a week, month or year compared to the previous period of equal length. To effectively detect fluctuations in traffic, it’s useful to choose weekly and monthly comparisons like from Monday to Sunday. You’ll then see whether your website is affected by the change in traffic on a particular day of the week or month. Finding out fluctuations is thus made easy, and you can take measures to increase visits.

• How to display trending data – Setting the time period is easy. On the top bar you’ll see “Standard Reporting”. Above the graph, click in the box with the calendar, set the period you want to check, and just below the two boxes with the data select “Compare to past.” The chart will suddenly display two lines, and even basic statistical data will be recalculated based on the newly selected period.

For easier orientation, a comparison period of 4 weeks from Monday to Sunday was chosen.

• Comparison results - The graph in the statistical results can clearly show how successful both sites are in the current period compared to the previous period. The visits, page views or bounce rate are the most important indicators of what direction your site is heading towards.

In the next part we’ll analyze these statistical metrics in detail and explain why it’s important to follow them, how to work with them, and how to use the results to improve your website in practice.

In order to practice the steps yourself, add the Google Analytics code to your Webnode project. In the follow-up, we’ll focus closer on visit details using the present data.

Luca Melia (2 posts)

Marketing assistant at Webnode. He's a contemporary society impressionist, extremely interested in communication and how human interaction works among others. He is responsible for the Italian community.