I was on the phone with a vendor yesterday who saw our Google Partner Logo in the footer of a document I had previously sent over, and asked me to explain what Google Analytics was exactly, and why a software so intuitive would need consultants.  It is easy for us to assume that everyone interested in online marketing knows about the basics of web analytics, but we often overlook the fact that we are jaded by being in the industry and that many people don’t know the basics.  This is why sharing a brief overview of the power of GA seems appropriate.

There is an ocean of tapped and untapped information out there about your consumer, your product, your strengths and your weaknesses, but this information is not always easily identifiable when it is dispersed.  It’s like going to 5 different doctors and then calling their offices for your results; imagine how much easier it is having all of your reports accessible in a single location.  That is where Google Analytics comes through for you.

Many marketers are scared off by the cost of web analytics, especially when they are struggling to pay their employees on a daily basis.  They think a program that can provide that much data, 24/7, will cost a fortune.  With Google Analytics, that point becomes null.  Google Analytics is a leading, FREE web analytics package that is sophisticated and scalable. Like any solution, it has some hurdles to implement (that’s what we’re here for! that’s why you need consultants!), but it can give you more than you could ever ask for in terms of user behavior feedback.

Ultimately, Google Analytics can give you insights on how to optimize online marketing campaigns and improve web design and content by identifying visitor preferences.  Identifying preferences and improving your site, means improving user experience and increasing conversions, which more times than less translates into being more successful and making more money.  Google has an intuitive setup which makes it very easy to stay on top of all that data in order to pick up on these trends and make valuable decisions about your business.  Whether you are a small company or a large corporation, Google Analytics allows you to optimize your paid and organic search. Compared to traditional media you can optimize your campaigns on the fly – your data is almost real-time and your access to that data is around the clock, non-stop.

Additionally, if you advertise with Google, you can tie GA with Adwords and determine ROI back to each keyword with little or no effort.  If you know which keywords perform well and which don’t, you can make instant changes to your campaigns.  Aside from search, you can also integrate your social media and mobile campaigns and compare one against the other to determine the value and benefit of each campaign.

Convinced? All you have to do is sign up for an accounthttp://www.google.com/analytics/ , add a snippet of code to each page of your site, set some concrete goals that you wish to achieve with your web initiative and sit back and wait for the data to start coming in.  For the skeptics out there, rest assured that Google uses first party cookies only and does not collect any personally identifiable information.  In other words, it is not invasive to your website or customers.

Google Analytics has become more and more full-fledged, with enterprise features being added every year at no additional cost to the end users. Besides, the sooner you sign up for Google Analytics, the more data you’ll have to gain insights from.

Not sure how to use the data you just mined?  Need to get more advanced with regular expressions and custom segments, but can’t figure out the best way to do it to get the most relevant results for your particular business?  Well maybe you need to follow our blog for more inside information or contact us for that consultation.  If you have any questions about this article, feel free to contactEndai Worldwide, an authorized Google Consultant and Partner.