Here’s how it usually goes with someone who is interested in web marketing:
Me: I can help with SEO.
Client: Yes! Awesome – love SEO. I need that. Done.
Me: I can help with email marketing.
Client: Excellent. I have been meaning to get a newsletter together. Great news.
Me: I can help with Google Analytics.
Client: So, it’s pretty cold in Maine, huh?
My point is that in the world of web marketing, Google Analytics gets little attention and even less sex appeal. No one wants to talk about data and charts – they want to talk about being #1 in Google and how killer their emails are.
Email marketing is one of the only ways to create a positive ROI on customers on the long term. Learn more about how Google Email Marketing can help promote mobile products in the post Ground Breaking Email Marketing.
Marketing does not have to be so expensive. There a lot of innovative ways to promote a product especially with the advent of the Internet. Imagine giving a fireman a hose and saying “spray it at the house” versus someone who knew exactly where to spray the water to put the fire out faster. Who would you rather have on your side?
For starters, Google Analytics provides a few basic things:
1. Learn Google Analytics – Start with Visitor information
This includes metrics such as where they came from around the USA and the world, how long they stayed on the site, if they are new or returning visitors, and their bounce rate. Bounce rate is an indication that they did not find what they are looking for.
Google analytics gives you an in-depth look at every single person who comes to your website.
2. Traffic Source Data
This takes visitors a step further and puts them in buckets. Where are visitors coming from?
This can be from search engines, from other websites, from emails, from people typing in your web address into their browser, etc. It’s all laid out for you to see. Furthermore, with the search engines, it shows you what keywords people typed in to get to your site.
You can’t ask for better keyword research than that. Want to learn more about who is visiting your apps? Checkout the post Answers to 3 Burning SEO Questions and learn who your audience is and how they found you.
3. Content Information
This means what people looked at when they did all that clicking on your site. What pages are making you money? What pages aren’t?
This can show you what pages have the highest bounce rate so you know where to edit first. Google Analytics can also show you where people go next from page to page.
4. Lots of other crazy-fun-awesome-data geek stuff
I’m not even going to get into it – but it’s great.
By analyzing this information, Google Analytics can tell us so much information that we otherwise wouldn’t know. It tells us if people actually like your blog posts or if they think you are boring (ouch!).
More importantly, it can tell you if you are making money from doing all that work to get to #1 in Google. It is an objective voice that will say “this works, this doesn’t” and has nothing to do with how big your budget is or how much you spent on your website.
When people ask me why I love Google Analytics so much, I tell them that it simplifies everything. I’ve been in meetings before with people arguing over dozens of changes to the site because they all want to be right.
Google Analytics prints out a report that shows everyone in the room what drives the most traffic and makes the company the most money. That’s the end of that.
It takes the guesswork out of strategy because it’s constantly surveying people on the data side and getting their feedback in the form of behavior.
Conclusion
Analysis of your web traffic will guarantee that you are making the right moves. And it’s free. All you need is someone who can tell you what the numbers are saying.
Yes, it’s that simple.
…and it works great for apps too 
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