Google Analytics Helps Companies Identify Their Key Performance Indicators

Jan. 23, 2013 - PRLog -- There are some businesses out there that have an army of staff who are working hard everyday to analyze that company’s return on investment: checking to see what parts of the business are doing well -- and which ones aren’t. It can be a costly process to weed out the top performers from the duds and to come up with effective strategies to improve operations. This is something best-in-class, Fortune 500 companies do on a weekly, daily, and sometimes hourly basis.

But, if you’re like the 99% of the entrepreneurs and small business owners in the world, you’ll find that you probably spend more time developing your client’s business than your own.

If I were to share with you one of my favorite tools for business analysis and planning , it would be Google Analytics simply because it’s easy to use and I can usually get all the information I want from it in 10 minutes or less. Do I use Google Analytics? I use everyday for myself and for my clients.

So You've Got Traffic. Now what?
Everyone wants traffic to their site. Great. So what do you do after you’ve acquired a visitor? Do they purchase? Do they sign up for a newsletter? How far are they going into your site before leaving? Do you even know why they’re leaving?

There is a lot of data to wade through in any form of analytics. Setting up goals and analyzing them is Step 2. Step number one is IDENTIFYING them. Start thinking about your Key Performance Indicators. What defines success for your site? At the same time, what defines the overall success of your business?

Are the measurements for success different from one industry to another? Yes, very much so. A fashion blog site wants ad traffic, click-throughs, and comments for each post because this is how they make money. On the other hand, a building and construction company wants people to download their product spec sheets and submit a quote request form. So, if you’re looking to cut through the numbers clutter of your analytics, you must first define your KPI’s and then narrow down your metrics.