Are You Underestimating Analytics?

Writing by Pay Per Click Journal on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 Comments (3)

Analytics is one of the most important things about running a website, whether you use PPC or not. But especially if you are running PPC campaigns. Are you underestimating the power of analytics information?

The first thing you need to know about analytics is to get some. Whether you pay for an analytics package or use a free one such as Google Analytics, it’s something you can’t do without. Through analytics you can track your visitors, see where they go, what they do on your site, when they leave, etc. It’s the most valuable tool for any website.

Be sure to include the analytics code on every page of your website, not just one or two. You won’t be tracking anything if you don’t have the code on the page.

Take a close look at your bounce rate. It says a lot. The bounce rate is the number of visitors who exit your site in under a minute, or sometimes (depending on your analytics package) after just viewing one page. If you have a high bounce rate then you need to figure out ways to keep your visitors longer.

Also pay attention to page views and visitor loyalty stats. How many unique visitors do you get each month? Each day? Knowing who returns and who doesn’t could be a very valuable piece of information for you.

Keep in mind that no analytics package is 100% accurate. Don’t look at hard numbers. Look at trends. Do you have a peak season? It’s nice to know when that is. How about your demographics. Do you cater to college students? High school students? Older people? Male or female? If you can gather that information then it says a lot about who your target customer is.

If you don’t have an analytics package installed on your website then now is the time to do. Do it before you start running PPC ads, not after.

Comments (3) Category: PPC Management

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3 Comments

Comment by JT

Made Wednesday, 2 of July , 2008 at 12:08 pm

I think there are also a lot of people are also overestimating analytics, they think it is a magic wand. Install and presto! Sales! When they look at the reports, it makes very little sense to them and they would just write it off as an expensive plaything.

Comment by Brick Marketing

Made Thursday, 3 of July , 2008 at 10:33 am

Good point, JT. Analytics is no magic wand. You do have to understand what you are looking at and be able to employ a strategy to use the data to improve your results.

Comment by Extracebu

Made Wednesday, 9 of July , 2008 at 9:47 pm

We have google analytic but we need more to see the accuracy and gaps. Can you recommend a free analytic.

Can you give us more pointers we should watch in our visitors behavior