If you use Google Analytics for yourself or for your clients, there are a few things you probably aren’t doing that you should. Google Analytics is a powerful tool but even the most powerful tools won’t help you if you don’t use them right.
Profiles
In order to understand the performance of your website, you have to understand your traffic and the best way to do this is by segmenting. Profiles allow you to setup segments that are both useful and trackable over a longer period. If you have to go through and create segments every time then you aren’t using it right.
Start by doing something as simple as creating profiles for internal and external traffic. Never forget to leave one unfiltered profile!
Goals
Goals are an important part of the website and they work for more than just e-commerce sites. Goals can include:
- Specific Events (i.e. liking or sharing a post)
- Engagement (i.e. how much time people spend on your site)
- Leads (i.e. did someone contact you?)
- Specific Sources (i.e. visits from Google, search terms, etc)
Goals are easy to track in Google Analytics and they can help you effectively monitor the performance of your websites on specific targets. Make them a useful part of your tracking.
Intelligence Alerts
One of the most underrated features of Google Analytics is the Intelligence Alerts. Just from your normal viewing and use of Google Analytics, would you be able to tell that just last Thursday your traffic from San Francisco spiked 300%? If you weren’t looking for it chances are you would miss it. Intelligence Alerts finds insights you would otherwise miss.
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