In my last post, I introduced the new Google Tools feature in Soholaunch and explained some of the things you could do with Google Webmaster Tools. In this post, I’ll tell you about some of the things you can do with with Google Analytics (the other Google product you can easily enable with the new Google Tools feature in Soholaunch).
Google Analytics is a free web statistics package from Google. It is so comprehensive and powerful, that it has grown to completely dominate the web stats industry. It will help you find out more than you ever thought you could know about your visitors.
Five important concepts worth understanding before you dive into Google Analytics:
1. Unique Visitors: A unique visitor is a single individual. If you you see “5 unique visitors” in Google Analytics, that means that 5 different people visited your website that day.
2. Visits: A visit is just like it sounds. If Billy visits your site, no matter how many pages he views, that’s one visit. If Billy comes back later that day and views some more pages, that’s another visit.
3. Pageviews: A pageview, also called a “hit,” is a person viewing one of your pages during a visit. If they click 5 pages, that’s 5 pageviews. If they come back later that day and view 5 more pages (or the same 5 pages again), that’s a total of 10 pageviews (and 2 visits).
Putting it all together: Let’s say Bob types comes to your website, views 5 pages, then leaves. Later that same day, Bob comes back to your website and views 2 more pages. In Google Analtyics, you will see 7 pageviews, 2 visits, and 1 unique visitor.
4. Exits: When Billy views your home page, clicks “Products,” doesn’t find what he’s looking for, then leaves your site, that will show as one Exit for the Products page. Monitoring the most common Exit pages in Google Analytics can help you find areas of your site that need to be improved.
5. Bounce Rate: When Billy arrives at your website, hates it right away, and leaves without viewing any other pages, that’s a bounce. Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who bounce right away instead of sticking around to view more content.
You can track all these metrics and more by signing up for a free Google Analytics account, then copy-pasting the Google tracking code they give you into Soholaunch’s new Google Tools feature.