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Why Google Analytics matters. Part one: the overview
>Geek out alert<
Tracking links within your site is really easy using the Google Analytics tool. Oldsters may know it as Urchin, too. To use GA, you place a little bit of JavaScript code in the body of your XHTML which basically sends info to Google whenever that page is accessed. Or maybe little gnomes do it. I am not a programmer. In any case, Google gets the info and you can assess your access stats for any page with this code on it from within the increasingly-ever-more-useful Google Analytics tool.
But Alan, you say, I am just a designer. Who cares? Let the programmers take care of all this stuff. Well, wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell your clients "hey, we can measure how your page is accessed, where people go within your site, and what is so unpopular you might want to consider sending it out on the ice floe to die with dignity"? These sorts of metrics help the client (and you) to assess the value of:
- their content (information)
- their site's structure (information flow)
- the usability of their site's navigation (flow control)
How would you like to be able to tell a client "hey, you should structure your site in a certain way so as to maximize your revenue"? I bet they would be willing to pay you more for such value. Eh? Eh? Never dismiss (more importantly, never let your clients dismiss) the value of measurability.
Getting started in Google Analytics is easy. Head on over to www.google.com/analytics/ and get going. Really. If you have a gmail account you are pretty much ready to go. I'll let the online tutorials and Q&A take it from there.
Once you have a site set up, there are lots of ways you can use GA to analyze data. Lots of books have been written on this, so I won't go over much more here. Let's just say that you can assuredly show your clients how awesomely their content is (or isn't) being received. You can then use these stats to retool the site structure and content to better reach your audience with the content you really want them to see. The web is iterative, iterative, iterative, itera----- you get the idea.
Next post: Solving the problem of tracking outbound links (or any links, really) that are embedded within a Flash document.Labels: analytics, flash, interface, seo, web design
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