The simple answer is that it does not have to be this way!

Let’s start with Google Analytics. When you first look at this then it can blow your mind! So much data, it looks complicated and can be scary. I ask you to hold that thought. Google Analytics can give you some real truths.
- List Item 1
- List Item 2
- List Item 3
Nearly all seven main sections contain subsections within them. These all provide some extremely valuable data on your audiences and what they are consuming. The data will feature terms that you may not be familiar with. So before we go into some of the sections, let's give some of the terms that you will see. ● Dimensions in Analytics - Examples of these are the browser, landing page, session duration, exit page. ● Metrics - Examples of these are sessions, how many pages per sessions, the browser used for search (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer) ● Bounce Rate - The percentage of visitors to a website that only consumes one page on the site and then leaves. They don’t go on and look at other pages on your website. ● Sessions - A period of time that a user is on your website or app. Acquisition Behaviour

Then we have age. It may be the case that you are seeing a particular age range that is engaging with the business that has surprised you. You may launch a marketing campaign that targets that age range. These are just a couple of ways to obtain information on your audience that you would not have necessarily considered if you had not studied your analytics data. This data ensures that you are using the correct marketing to target the correct audience that is engaging with your business.

Now onto acquisition. Understanding where your traffic is coming from is vital. How many times have you placed advertising or used a platform and come to a decision that it has not worked….two, three times? The fact of the matter is that sometimes advertising has worked but not instantly. It is all about timing and people being comfortable with your brand. This section will give you really detailed information on how people are arriving at your website and where they are coming from. These are split into the following: ● Direct - They came to your website directly by either typing in your website address (URL), clicking on a bookmark to your website or clicking on a link within an email. This is a strong indicator of just how strong your brand is. ● Organic - We have all heard the term SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. This is a good indicator of just how well this is doing. It is traffic that has come straight from a search via search engines. If it is rising then your SEO is doing its job. ● Paid Search - Advertising on search engines such as Google or Bing is called Paid Search. If your numbers are good on this then your paid search campaigns are doing well. ● Referral - This refers to traffic that has come via a link from another website. It could be your profile on a newspaper website, it could be a directory profile on things such as Yell, Thomson Local. It could be from a blog you have written for another website. If this number is good then that means your brand is building and other websites recognise the value of your business and services. ● Social - Many businesses do not use social but they really should. This section shows just how effective social can be, and shows you which social platform is driving the most traffic to your business. This is crucial when building a social strategy for our clients.

As you can see from the picture above the traffic is broken down into the metrics that I have highlighted above. If we click on the individual elements, and in this case, we have chosen social, it shows the platforms that have sent traffic to this website. These are in the order of most powerful to least powerful. All you simply have to do is select the date range you want to look at and this will tell you whether your social strategy is working. In this case, social accounted for over 20% of the clients' traffic on the website that month.

This simple approach could save your company a significant amount of time and money in terms of where you market and what channels to use.
