Google Analytics is an excellent resource for tracking and analyzing your website data, but you may not be taking advantage of its full range of capabilities. These six little-known features in Google Analytics can help you make the most of your data.
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Intelligence reports
Google Analytics is constantly gathering data about your website, and occasionally, it will collect information that’s out of the ordinary. For instance, your website visitors could suddenly drop, or your bounce rate could go up unexpectedly.
This information is stored in your Google Analytics Intelligence reports. The ability to monitor these kinds of day-to-day changes can help you make better marketing decisions over time.
You’ll sign into Google Analytics and click on the Ask Analytics Intelligence tab on the home page to view this information.
Funnel visualization
Every website visitor has a specific set of steps they take to go from being a prospect to being a customer. And when you utilize funnel visualization, it makes it easier to see areas where you might be missing out on sales.
For instance, if you run an e-commerce business, you can set up a funnel visualization for how a customer checks out. If you notice that a large number of customers abandon their carts on the Billing and Shipping page, you can assume there’s a problem there that you need to address.
Real-time analytics
Google Analytics offers a real-time analytics feature that lets you see who is active on your site at that exact moment. You can see what pages users are interacting with and any conversions that have taken place.
You can also see where your traffic is coming from and whether visitors stay and interact with your site. This information can be helpful anytime you’re launching a new campaign and expecting a spike in traffic.
To view your real-time analytics, you’ll log into your account, open the reports and click “Real-Time.” From there, you’ll be able to see how many users are active on your site right now.
Many business owners find that they have so much data they’re unsure how to interpret it or what to do with it all.
Social analytics
The social analytics tab is one of the most helpful features Google Analytics offers. When you click on this tab, you can see how much of your traffic comes from social media, with a break down of numbers for each site.
And if you set up and are tracking goals in Google Analytics, you can see how many of your conversions are attributed to social media clicks. This data can be a great way to measure your business’s ROI from social media.
To view your social analytics, you’ll open the Acquisition tab, followed by the Social tab. From there, you can see which social media sites contribute to your traffic and conversions.
[Read more: How Brands Are Using Customer Social Content to Drive Sales]
User-ID tracking
The User-ID feature lets you track the engagement data from a single user ID. This will allow you to see how individual users engage with your business and how many interactions it takes for that person to become a customer.
This is important because it gives you a more complete picture of the customer journey. Instead of just seeing the final conversion, you can see each touchpoint that an individual had with your business.
Custom alerts
These days, most businesses are not struggling with a lack of data. Instead, many business owners find that they have so much data they’re unsure how to interpret it or what to do with it all. That’s why Google Analytics offers custom alerts.
Custom alerts let you organize your data in a format you can understand. For instance, you can set up a custom alert for every time your website receives a new backlink or referral traffic.
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