A few lesser-known features of Google Analytics

If you are a businessman, you know about Google Analytics (GA). It’s a service offered by Google to track and report website traffic. After acquiring Urchin in November 2005, Google set out to revolutionise how business is conducted and, since then, has built solutions or tools from the ground up. GA not only provides solutions to commonly occurring problems, but is highly proactive in finding solutions to problems that haven’t even occurred. This makes GA a pioneer in the field of digital research and development. Unfortunately, this also makes it hard to keep up with the many tools or features that are either being upgraded or introduced on a regular basis. So let’s look at some of the lesser-known features of Google Analytics that can create a huge impact on the way you run your business.

Google Analytics 360

If business is an organism, is there a single vein that connects all its vital organs like marketing, sales and advertising? Yes, and it’s called funding. As the backbone of a business, funds needs to be used in the optimum way to bring out desired results. But that is not always the case, for entrepreneurs do not always know which part of their funding worked and which didn’t. Google Analytics 360 Suite is here to change that. According to Harry Tannenbaum - Head of Marketing Analytics, Nest, “Companies spend a lot of money on marketing, it’s difficult to understand which dollars are working and which dollars aren’t. The Google Analytics 360 Suite allows you to actually understand which half is working.”

To know more about it, click here.

Tracking

According to Caleb Whitmore, Founder and Principal Consultant at Seattle-based Analytics Pros, “GA is a platform that lets you restore some of that gap that’s grown between businesses and their customers in the digital age. It measures all of those digital interactions in an aggregate, anonymised way, but in a way that still can paint a very real picture of who your customer is and what they need or want from you, and how you can better serve them.” Tracking website traffic is a thing of the 2000s. A decade later, GA has transformed the world of tracking and clicking and expanded its expertise to ‘fill in the gaps’. Here are a few features that will help you track the smallest of gaps.

Tracking RSS feeds

The RSS Feeds tracker can help you analyse click counts and determines the exact source from where a click originated. This will require you to go to your feedburner dashboard.

In order to understand how to use this feature, click here.

Tracking missing pages

If a user clicks on your website and is transported to error 404 page, it’ll not only tarnish your reputation as a service provider but will make it difficult to get back the lost customer. The best way to avoid such embarrassment is to track error pages in real-time and fix them at the earliest. GA will enable you to conveniently tweak the JavaScript code to enable this.

To understand the usage and merits of this feature, click here.

Tracking clicks in emails

This valuable feature can help you track the number of clicks generated in emails. Not only this, you can also track clicks on links that cater to external websites and track document downloads like MS Word, PPT and MP3 files.

To understand the workings of this feature, click here.

Tracking blog comments

With more and more businesses adapting to the demands of social media, there’s one thing that often escapes their notice – blog comments. While many see quantity as a good sign, they fail to see what the comments are truly saying. However, when you track comments in GA, it will let you know what drives people to comment on your blog. This valuable composite of insights can help you write the kind of blog that will encourage more people to comment on it.

To learn more about how this works, click here.

Linking your Google AdWords Account with GA

Once you link your Google AdWords account with GA, you can gain access to highly valuable data. For example, you can see where you visitors are coming from, what content is popular and whether the clicks are, indeed, converting to your goals. You can also view impressions, clicks, ROI, page view metric, the length of time visitors spent on your site and more.

GA has been designed to help you make the most of your business. In fact, for many, it’s not a tool but a valuable employee that delivers more than what’s expected of it, every single time. If you want to know the ins and outs of your business, its loopholes or things that work in its favour, keeping up with GA is a must.