Google Analytics is one of the most valuable tools your business has at its disposal, giving you access to important information about your website, identifying who your customers are and where they’re coming from, and seeing what content your visitors like and want to see more of. Analytics doesn’t come ready to use right out of the box. It requires configurations that can become time-consuming and confusing for beginners to the platform.

Why your business needs to unlock the full potential of Google Analytics

Having the ability to gain a better understanding of your clients and be able to tailor your messaging to better suit what your audience is looking for. Google Analytics lets your team analyze and understand data that will give your business a much stronger understanding of who is looking at your website and the overall effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts.

Having this data at hand makes it possible to pivot when elements of your digital strategy are going unnoticed or underappreciated, letting you get the most impact from your digital marketing budget. Detailed reporting gives you the information that you need, displaying important insights that are easy to share among your team. Analytics can also be integrated with other Google solutions including Google Ads, Data Studio, Optimize, and more.

How to get the most out of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for modern businesses, but it requires some fine-tuning to ensure that your business can get the most out of it. One of the most useful features you’ll want to have properly implemented is Demographics and Interests, which breaks down your audience into a number of segments, including age, gender, interests, online travel, and purchasing activities. All of this data is extremely useful in developing a stronger digital strategy, and as such should be used to its fullest potential. In order to enable Demographics and Interests, you’ll have to first enable Advertising Reporting Features, and then enable the Demographics and Interests reports view – Analytics will then begin to automatically collect valuable data about audience demographics and interests.

Using goals to measure how often users complete specific activities is another great data point for your business to collect. These are generally referred to as conversion goals, and can encompass a wide number of actions including purchases and submitting certain forms. Conversion goals help your team better understand the conversion rates of your organization’s website or app, allowing you to make more informed decisions regarding digital strategy and marketing efforts. Conversion goals can be paired with UTM links, which are tagged URLs that help you identify where each viewer is coming from. UTM links allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of various social media platforms, blog posts, and other areas in regards to how many users it managed to attract to your page. UTM links can also be viewed in the Campaigns tab when they are in use.

Integrating Google Analytics with other Google solutions like Tag Manager and Google Ads can unlock a wealth of benefits for your business. Tag Manager allows a tag manager to easily update and deploy unique tags on your website or app – in order to do this, you’ll need to install Tag Manager in your Analytics account. Google Tag Manager allows you to add tags to any aspect of a website or app, making it easier to accurately track specifics actions and triggers that aren’t analyzed by Google Analytics. A web developer only has to install the Tag Manager container on your website once for you to be able to track anything you want, as often as you’d like. Google Ads can also be linked from within your Analytics account, allowing your company to monetize your online presence and get more out of ads.

ion8 is an all-in-one agency with a full team of experienced Google Analytics experts who are ready to properly implement and integrate Analytics throughout your entire organization. Our team will ensure that your Analytics is properly installed, integrating it with solutions that will get you the most out of your digital marketing strategy. For more information about what ion8 can do for your business, contact us today.