So you have a website and you are getting visitors. But do they make it to your products, the real meat and potatoes, or are they simply seeing the home page and little else?
Knowing which pages your visitors are seeing, and more importantly where they are leaving from, is key to any site’s success.
This is where Google Analytics comes in. A small bit of code will give you access to a wealth of information to help you pinpoint your site’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
Understanding Traffic Sources
Let’s say that, after installing Google Analytics, you are seeing 80% of your traffic coming from direct sources. This means that someone is typing your site’s name in to the address bar in their browser. Chances are these are customers that know your site or have heard from their friends about you.
But this likely means you are missing out on the average web surfers who go to Google and types in a search term. Why aren’t you getting traffic from there? People aren’t finding your page. This may be a sign that you need to spend some time to better optimize your keywords, add alt-text to your images, or improve the meta-data on your page. After implementing these changes, you may see an increase in traffic from all sources, not just search.
Funnels and Paths
Google Analytics also has funnel and goal functionality. By setting up a funnel, you create a path to a specific page, such as an Email Signup or a Thank You page. By analyzing the funnel, you can see where along the path your users are jumping from your site. Are they leaving after three pages? Maybe your signup page is buried too far in your site, and you need to link directly to it from the home page. Are users adding items to their carts, but stopping short of purchasing? Perhaps you are asking for too much information, or your customers do not know that your site is secure.
This is just a peek at what information you will have access to from Google Analytics. At Vortx, we can help you install Google Analytics on your website, as well as help you dig through the mountains of data to pinpoint the areas of your site that can be improved on to help bolster sales, generate leads, and increase the success rate of your online endeavors.
Written by Ian K.
Tags: Analytics, Google, SEO, Vortx, Web Traffic
is your expert 
Captivate your audience and showcase your brand with our 
Are you just starting your online business? Did you have a pre-exisiting site and have recently converted to the AspDotNetStoreFront platform? Try our economical design solution with 
Increase conversions by up to 145%. Studies show that making the right changes to your site can increase your conversion rate by as much as 145%!
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
[...] this only scratches the surface of the data Google Analytics can provide. See our other articles on Knowing Your Traffic and Event [...]