Merge

Google Analytics is free. It offers a tremendous amount of information for its users. Unfortunately, the typical company doesn't use Google Analytics at all. Here are three--no, three and a half--quick things you can do to make Google Analytics work for you:

1. Know the goal, and track it. Let's say your web site is looking to create leads. In Google Analytics you can setup a "Goal" to track the conversion of your web sites. A quick glance of your Google dashboard tells you how effective your web site is:

 
2. Keep an eye on your visitor trends. Is traffic going up or is it decreasing? Once you identify a trend, you can begin to look into some reasons. For instance, what key words are most prominent, what pages on the web site are the most popular, where are your users leaving? All of this information can be had.
 

3. Make sure your bouncer isn't doing his job too well. There is something called the "bounce rate" which means your user comes to a page on your web site and they immediatly leave (or at least they don't go anywhere else). It depends on your industry, but you'd like to see this rate under 30%. Most web sites we inherit have bounce rates of greater than 60%. A clear message, strong calls to action and good usability should take care of this problem. Nonetheless, keep an eye on the bounce rate.

3.5 Keep it simple. Decide what you're going to track, schedule a time to review the stats and take 10 minutes to look into it. The reason most people don't look at their stats is because they don't have a plan and therefore, they end up not reviewing their stats at all. The benefit of reviewing your stats is too great not to do it.