Google Analytics (GA) is simply the tool that collects the data for analysis, it can provide you with very useful answers but here’s the catch… first YOU must identify what you want to know – if you don’t you will spend a lot of time roaming aimlessly looking at pretty graphs.

Believe me, and i’ve rolled this out for a lot of people and watched them use it, GA has the ooh ah factor; nice interface, offers a lot of information, you can slice and dice this info in lots of ways and pull off reports in txt, excel and pdf – my goodness. GA impresses people so much that they seem to forget that its a tool to help them analyse their visitor activity. Time and time again i’ve watched people spend hours wondering around it aimlessly ooh ahing without extracting anything useful. When they go back for a second visit they’ve also forgotten how they found what was useful the last time.

Key to using GA is knowing what you want from it and knowing how to use what it
provides.

To help get the most from using GA, and before you login, write down answers to these 3 questions:

1. I want web stats for…
Today – Last 7 days – Last month – Year to date – A defined timeframe?
2. I want to know…
3. I want to know this because…

Answering these 3 questions will keep you on track and help you get value from GA.

Also, if you find something you know is useful when using Google Analytics keep a note of what it is, why it’s useful, how to find it again (believe me you’ll be happy you did this when you visit next time).