Google This: Free Website Analytics and Optimization Tools with Google Analytics

Analytics are the life blood of any website, especially any online retailer or affiliate site.  And while there are many tried and true packages which can easily be integrated into your site at a modest cost, Google has created an enterprise class web analytics tool for free.  You can pay more, but why?

Google Analytics provides actionable insight into how to optimize websites, online campaigns, and even offline marketing efforts.  It is a sophisticated yet easy to use application which will help you determine which marketing initiatives are driving the most valuable traffic to your site and how best to convert those visitors once they are there.  It integrates with AdWords, giving you atomic level detail on which keywords are most profitable or driving the desired action.

With Google Analytics, you can:

• Compute ROI on your marketing campaigns
• Customize reports and schedule distribution to your colleagues
• Develop strategies for ad campaigns, website initiatives, merchandising and e-commerce,
• Discover which customer segments are most valuable
• Drill – get curious about whats going on with your traffic

The package is a breeze to install – you just paste the Google Analytics tracking code into each of your web site pages and begin tracking immediately.   You can track and compare all your ads, email newsletters, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links and keywords on Google and the other engines.  Tracking referrals gives you insight into your social media, article distribution, and link building SEO initiatives by showing you where the traffic is coming from.

The e-commerce tracking allows you to track transactions to a campaign and keyword, by traffic source.  It will tell you the value of each visit in actual dollars for any time period you choose to measure, or compare one time period to another.  You also get sophisticated funnel visualizations to see which pages result in lost conversion, and a site overlay which shows traffic and conversion information for every link on your site.  All for free.

Lastly, Google has included the ability to drive “experiments” to see how different landing pages will perform in your conversion funnel.  Experiments can range from simple A/B tests to sophisticated multi-variate tests.   I used to pay thousands of dollars for a single multi-variate test and it took tons of marketing and engineering resources to implement the test.  Now I can do it for free, and it’s not that hard to implement.  Cool!

Click here to check it out at the Google Analytics home page.

7 Responses to “Google This: Free Website Analytics and Optimization Tools with Google Analytics”

1. Richard McLaughlin on January 7th, 2009:

   Your link, http:/www.google.com/analytics is bad. it 404’s

2. Bryan Stapp on January 7th, 2009:

   Thanks for the heads up, the link is now fixed. I love the power of the internet that gives you literally millions of “eyeballs” from smart people who will help you to become better.

   But the real power is when someone like Rick makes a decision to take the initiative to be proactive and let me know there was a bad link instead of just going on about his day. It inspired me to make the fix right away – closing the loop on his helpful suggestion.

   Imagine all the improvements that can be made by helpful suggestions like this. What if our domestic car makers had listened to their customers and made changes? Communication followed by action is powerful. Thanks again!

3. The Baldchemist on January 7th, 2009:

   Your car makers took no action while evryone was taking their bit. Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda et al took 65% of the market. The American car makers have never managed to capture an export market.
   The customers never listened, blinded by easy creditand promises of an unrealistic dream.
   But listen I digress, thanks for your Google Analytics article. I may need it later. Nice one.
   If I may I’ll offer a prediction for 2009 as well as wishing you a very good one.
   I wanted to make a New Year resolution and I resolved not to make any more resolutions. What I want to do though is make a prediction that I would much rather not make. That is, an innevitable Depression not only brewing but just about to explode. There are a thousand reasons but the most obvious, even 2 years ago, an American debt 350% of GDP. Ponzi schemes rampant from Madoff to Icelands debt 10 times its GDP and more to be exposed. Now, there are loads of other corrupt frauds I could name here but that will do. As I see it the only saviour is a devaluing of he dollar by at least 30%. And then everyone will be unloading their dollars fast.
   Keep well. The Baldchemist

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