A Quick Beginners Guide To Analytics in 2020

If you know anything about analytics, it’s probably that you should be looking at them regularly to decipher what is working for your business and what isn’t. Using these stats and figures, you can make sure that your business is always doing the right thing and can get the best results. The only thing is, many people don’t think that analytics are all that easy to understand. In fact, they can be quite intimidating.

Below, we’ll talk you through a few things quickly so you can have a better idea of what you should be looking at:

Is It Free?

There are multiple ways you can check your analytics. Google Analytics, for example, has both paid and free versions. If you are a small or medium sized business, then you should be fine with the free version. You will get more support with the paid version, however. Start by creating your account and add the URL and industry, as well as the name of the site you’d like to track. You will then get your custom code that you add after the head tag of your site.

You can check it’s all working by visiting the “Real-Time reports” section while clicking around on your site in a different tab or on your phone. You only need to add the tag to every page template, not every individual page on your site.

Other Kinds Of Analytics

Of course, there are other kinds of analytics that you should consider looking at depending on what kind of business you are. PetroBase is one such example – you can use this service to check your analytics in the oil and gas industry. There’s no one size fits all guide to checking analytics, which is why it’s so important to understand what is important to your own business.

Analytics That May Be Helpful To All Businesses/Industries

The Real Time Report

This tells you what is happening on your site right now, showing you visitors, the pages they are looking at, the platforms they came from, where they are, and so on. This is probably the least valuable metric to look at, so don’t be fooled into thinking you should have your eye on it constantly. Instead, you should be looking at useful analytics that pack a greater punch, such as whether a sale is driving conversions or whether a new blog post is bringing in traffic.

Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value can be assessed using the Lifetime Value report. This allows you to see those who are most valuable to your company. You can utilize this by ensuring you give incentives to valuable customers.

Behaviour Reports

This is a valuable report to use and one you should consider looking at frequently.

Landing Pages

This defines a landing page as the first page in a session, and the visitor’s first interaction with your website. If you’re interested in the sources such as organic, paid social, direct, etc, driving users to the landing page, you can add Source/Medium as a secondary dimension.

Site Speed

Tells you how quickly your site is loading for users. The faster the better!

What do you think you should be looking at for your business?