Google Analytics (GA) is a free online service designed to help marketers and Web masters better understand their sites’ visitors — where they come from, what they do on the sites, which pages they linger on, content that causes them to leave, and much more.
But GA “can be a daunting challenge for many users, because of its massive amount of data,” says Garrett Mehrguth, CEO of Directive Consulting. “It becomes one of those things where you can spend hours in it, but after doing it a couple of times and not getting any great takeaways, you usually stop completely.”
The greatest challenge for new or inexperienced users isn’t finding data in GA; it’s extracting meaningful, actionable insights, according to Derek Gleason, an SEO analyst with Workshop Digital. “Those actionable insights aren’t superficial metrics like total traffic but are for more segmented and targeted audiences, like organic users who navigate to a subset of service pages,” he says. “Of course, a first-time user won’t know where to look, which is why the best opportunity for success is before you log in — finding out which metrics will mean the most to your business.”
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