One of the little known yet most powerful tools for webmasters is Google Analytics, this free site statistics and analysis tool has many features that you wouldn’t  find in many standalone packages that cost money, it is truly a great tool and I can say from the moment you start viewing reports (after you have signed up and configured your website for analytics) you will notice just how powerful this tool is.

What stats and analysis does Google Analytics display

Google Analytics contains just about any report you would require to run a website, this includes basic stats like Visitors, Page Views, Visitor Loyalty,  Unique Visitors, along with more advanced features like site overlay, Bounce Rates, Length of visit, Top content and Top Exit points. The features and stats that this tool tracks is very extensive so I will only cover the features I use the most with my sites.

Executive Overview

The first screen you will notice once you have logged into Analytics, and selected the domain you want to view is the Executive Overview, this shows you the general stats you would be interested in  to see how your site is tracking, and contains the following graphical representations of your sites stats, visitor/page view graph,  New vs. Returning Visitor Pie Chart, the Geo Map over lay (map of world and push pins were visitors are from), and finally Visits by Source. See figure 1 below for a screenshot of this page. On the left hand side of figure 1 you will notice a calendar control, this is where you can change date range that all stats will be shown against, and includes these graphical stats of the Executive Overview as well any other stats you will find in Analytics.

Figure 1:Tthe graphical stats shown in the Executive Overview (click to see full image)

Content Optimization | Content by titles

Under the section Content Optimization you will find Content by Title statistics. This is an extremely useful stat and will basically tell you how many Page views a post has had, the Average time the page was open for,  % of Exits on this page and finally the Google Adsense earnings for this page during the period selected. Statistics on this page can be used to see how well a post has performed, and how well users have received a post, for instance if users were reading a page for a very short average time, this could mean  the post is not what they expected, they already knew the information you were trying to convey to them, or it is not no topic. This could be especially true if a post has a sort average read time along with a high exit rate.

Here I would be paying attention to posts that have a high average read time and low exit rate, this would indicate users have liked your post, If I saw this I would defiantly write another post or follow up with the same or similar topics See figure 2 below for this page.

Figure 2: The content by titles statistic 

Content Optimization |Navigational Analysis | Site Overlay

Another favourite feature is the Navigational Analysis | Site Overlay feature, this page gives you a window of your site and an overlay of for each link/clickable area when you click on the graphical overlay, stats are displayed for that clickable area. You might be thinking these stats is available in table form, but I can tell you great benefits in seeing a graphical representation of where readers have clicked and can be invaluable for determining the hot zones of your site and therefore the most effective spots for ads.

I would recommend using this feature of  Analytics to test the best place to position ads, by rotating a series of ads in different positions with a rotation interval of two or more weeks, at the end of each rotation period  take a screen shot of this window  and change the ad until you have tried all ads types in  each position. Finally at the end analyse the traffic stats to find out the best position for each ad type * note  this should be calculated by determining the  of revenue you would generate for each ad type in each position. Figure 3 below shows the site overlay page.

Figure 3: The site overlay feature

As you can see Google Analytics it a very powerful site statistics and analysis tool, I encourage anyone who has a website and wants to improve unique visitors, page views, ad revenue and to find out in general what readers are doing on your site to use it. Just be creative and think about what your stats mean and how you can improve your site from these stats.  

There are many more stats and analysis features in Analytics, I have just highlighted some of the features I use and how I use these features to improve my sites.

If  you have any great tips for using analytics to improve your site, please post a comment I would love to hear what you have to say.