Google Analytics is, without a doubt, the most popular web analytics tool on the internet. The reason why is because it’s an easy to use tool that allows you to generate valuable insights about the visitors to your website. Using this analytics data, you can optimize your site, therefore driving more conversions, sales, or page views.  Below is a list of 10 reasons you should use Google Analytics on your website.

1. It’s Free! 

There is no cost to start collecting information about your website’s visitors. Seriously, no subscription fees, upsells, or catches to get started. All you need is a free Google account and a few spare minutes.

2. It Provides Hands-Off Data Collection

With just a little bit of code installed on your website and you are off and running. There is no data entry, databases, or spreadsheets required. Google does all the heavy lifting for you by automatically collecting and cataloging the data. Even if you don’t log in for a year, the data will still be there for when you are ready to dive in.

3. It’s Easy To Integrate With Other Digital Tools and Vendors

Since it is part of the Google suite, it will easily link to your Google Ads account. That means with a simple link; it will automatically import your conversions into Google Ads. The integrations aren’t just limited to Google products—most major 3rd party tools from call tracking, shopping carts, and 3rd party advertising tools will have integrations in place. This makes it easy to transfer information across all of your digital marketing efforts.

4. You Can See Where People Are Leaving Your Website

Learn how visitors are interacting with your website. By learning things like — how many clicks it takes before a visitor gives you a phone call or fills out one of your online forms? You can also discover where people are leaving your site so you can address these issues before you lose too many sales. Do you have a form that is too confusing? Does it take too many clicks to make a purchase? Using your analytics data, you will be able to answer all these questions about your website.

5. It Allows You To Generate Customer Demographic Profiles

Google Analytics will help you build a profile of your visitors by seeing their age, gender, interest, device, browser, and even location of your audience

6. It’s Easy To See Where Your Traffic Is Coming From

In one simple report, you can see how much traffic is coming in from each channel (Paid Search / Facebook etc.). You can also quickly identify the quality of traffic coming into your site. For example, if you run both search and email marketing campaigns, you can see the number of visitors from each, how many pages they viewed, and how long they spent browsing your site. The traffic data allows you to make more informed decisions on how to optimize your advertising spend.

7. You Can Easily See What Content Or Products Are Most Popular

Using the content drill down report, you can analyze which pages get the most traffic. 

This allows you to see what products or blog posts drive the most engagement or views. By looking at this data, you can deliver more of what your visitors want. With better content, you can set yourself up for more sales or page views in the future.

8. Is Easy To Set Goals

Once you have the basics of Google Analytics down, its time to start setting your goals. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to your business’s success. This goal is unique to your company, and it’s individual needs. It could be signing up for an email newsletter, an online purchase, or maybe a phone call. Goal and conversions are among the most crucial elements in Google Analytics, and I will have many more posts on this topic in the future.

9. A Simple Tool For Benchmarking Performance

Once you have collected analytics data for a while, you can start creating benchmarks. These can be the number of website visitors, bounce rate, or goals, to name a few. It allows you to visually gauge the growth of your site and how it performs month over month. In time you will see trends emerge and have a firm handle on what constitutes a good or bad month. By keeping your thumb on monthly benchmarks, you can better plan and make more competent decisions with your advertising spend.

10. See If Your Advertising Is Working

As I mentioned above, by reviewing the source/medium or channels report, you will be able to compare the performance of individual digital advertising mediums. However, you can also utilize Google Analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your traditional offline media. You should notice bumps in traffic on the days/weeks that you advertise on television or radio. These bumps are a quantitative way to see the web traffic that your advertising efforts give you. 

I hope these 10 reasons you should use Google Analytics helps you understand the need to implement Google Analytics on your website. Click here to sign up today.

Good luck with your future digital advertising campaigns!