The Google Analytics platform is a powerful tool needed for any online property or advertising project. It gives you the ability to analyze data from all touch points so you can truly understand the engagements taking place by your customers. Without the measure of data there is no way to measure the performance of a digital property, digital advertising campaign or engagement of your brand by customers today. Google Analytics will allow you to understand your website user so you can make sound decisions on what is actually working and what needs to be adjusted for better performance. Google Analytics will help you greatly improve your business model.
A Google Analytics account is your core foundation for everything that happens with your tracked data. Your account is much like a powerful folder that organizes all metrics. Your journey begins by creating a Google Analytics account.
The Google Analytics Acquisition report displays data based on the source and medium of your users and other important dimensions. This is very valuable data to have and something all businesses should be using to dial in their branding, marketing and advertising tactics.
When you review the multi-channel funnels' report, you may see Assisted Conversions listed. This information displays channels that contributed to the conversion. Let's say a consumer visited your Facebook page and clicked on your website and then did a search on Google for a product or service you sell and saw your Google AdWords ad placement and clicked on it and contacted you, Facebook would be considered an assisted conversion.
Google Analytics presents several attribution models to choose from, depending on your business model. Attribution gives you the ability to assign credit to the marketing channel that led to the conversion. This is a rather important metric that all digital advertisers should be tracking.
When someone visits your website or digital property and takes no further action, the session is logged as a bounce. In other words, they first land on your home page and then exits your website, that is a single pageview session and that is considered a bounce.
Considering the bounce definition above, the bounce rate tracks the percentage of all sessions against those that are single sessions. The lower the bounce rate the better, but a 0% bounce rate is not possible unless tracking is not working correctly. A bounce rate of 40-60% is considered really good and ranges above and below that have different meaning for different business models, industries and uses.
Conversions are the gold standard for Google AdWords campaigns or pretty much any advertising system. A conversion is charted when a consumer makes a purchase or completes a defined goal from your advertising actions. Where some are focused on clicks or views, the more valuable metric is absolutely with the conversion.
A Goal is tracked each time a defined action takes place with your advertising. If you set up your AdWords campaign to acquire form fills on your website, getting a user to visit your website and submit a web contact form would be the targeted goal. If they actually did it, you would have a conversion or what is referred to as a goal completion.
Google Analytics uses a tracking tag to gather metrics. This tag is also referred to as the tracking code. Your Analytics tag must be installed correctly for it to work correctly for you.
While there are hundreds of terms used throughout the Google Analytics platform, these terms listed above will get you started. They will provide a solid foundation for you to better understand the digital advertising world. Please check back from time to time for more information or contact our Google Analytics team for direct, personal care of your questions and concerns. We love Google Analytics and we want you to, too!
Mica Specialties is a Panama City, Florida digital advertising agency that uses Google products and services daily. We are highly engaged with Google and their best practices required to assist businesses in becoming successful. Google sets the standards and Mica Specialties excels to exceed those demands by being a certified professional in all aspects of Google AdWords, Mobile Site Design and Google Analytics. Mica Specialties is a badged Google Partner agency ready and able to assist with any and all Google services.
James Clemens is the owner of Mica Specialties and a Google Top Contributor for AdWords and Google Partners. James is also a Google Rising Star for AdWords Express and Google My Business. James currently hold certifications in Google Analytics, Google AdWords Search, Google AdWords Display, Google AdWords Mobile, Google AdWords Shopping, Google AdWords Video, Google Mobile Site Design and Digital Sales. James also holds several competencies and achievements with Google.
Please contact us for a free Google Analytics Assessment today.