Help! How do I get a grasp of website analytics?

Dear Aunty B,

I run the website for my small business but there is still a lot I need to learn about the site’s analytics. I know how to get a simple overview of it, but anything more can give me a bit of a headache. Do you have any tips for me about how I can I find out from Google Analytics when visitors came to my website during the day and how long they stayed and what pages they visited?

Thanks,

Nui Webb

Hi Nui,

You’d be surprised to learn just how many small businesses don’t feel up to speed when it comes to monitoring their website analytics or the success of their online marketing campaigns.

But rest assured, there is plenty of information out there to get your started. Over at BoostBlogTraffic, Casey Kluver has a great blog post that aims to demystify the Google Analytics Dashboard.

Kluver’s blog is written primarily with bloggers in mind, but I think anyone who runs a small business will get a lot of out of it too.

Look at it as a bit of a “Google Analytics for Dummies” – it breaks down the major things the platform does and how to interpret it, including who is visiting your site, where they are coming from, if they are repeat visitors and how long they are spending on your site.

“All you need to do is get over that initial learning curve,” Kluver says.

“And the best way to get comfortable with the tool is simply to start using it.”

Be Smart,

Aunty B