1.3 Who Are My Store Visitors
Introduction
Perhaps the most important step to think of for now is traffic! That’s right, you’re expecting new visitors to your website on daily basis. There are many methods to do so, whether paid or organic, however before that, you should be ready to receive and analyze that traffic. The most common questions to ask yourself are, who are these visitors? Where are they coming from? What are they doing on my store? How long are they staying there? The questions might be never ending, but let’s start with understanding the basics. Of course, once you are able to see your customers’ behavior on the store, it would be easier to know how to bring back those potential clients and eventually get them to place an order.
Steps
What Is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web analytic service offered by Google that tracks and reports your website traffic and performance. Google launched the service in November 2005.
It shows you:
- Who visits your website – user’s geographical location, which browser did they use, what is their screen resolution, which language they speak, etc.
- What they do when they are on your website – you can see how long users stay on your website, what pages they are visiting the most, which page is causing the users to leave most often, how many pages an average user is viewing etc.
- When they visit your site – you can see which time of the day is the hottest for your website. This helps you pick the time to publish your posts. If that time zone is not compatible, then you can schedule your posts.
- Where did they arrive on your website from – you can see how the user found you. Whether it was through a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc), social networks (Facebook, twitter etc), a link from another website, or a direct type-in. Google Analytics also shows you the breakdown of each traffic source, so you can focus on specific ones if you like.
- How users interact with your site’s content – You can see how many users clicked on a specific link.
- And much more.
Knowing your audience and what they want is an important success factor for any website. It will help you analyze your customer’s behavior, hence help you in optimizing your website and its user experience, exactly where it is needed. This in return will definitely result into more conversions, after understanding your customer’s interactions with your online store!
There are plenty of stats softwares and plugins, but we believe that Google Analytics is a must have for every website. Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet.
Please refer to our Analytics articles in order to read and understand those numbers!
How to create your Google Analytics account?
If you do not have one, you should create a Google Analytics account as soon as you launch your website. Visit google.com/analytics, click the “Sign in to Google Analytics” button (top right), and follow the on-screen instructions!
How to setup Google Analytics on your store?
In order to know how to link Google analytics to your store, kindly follow the below steps:
- From your store’s dashboard, go to “System” > “Advanced” > “Settings”
- “SALES” > “Google API”
- Then click on “Google Analytics” tab to expand it, and fill in the following:
- “Enable”: Set it to “Yes”
- “Type”: Set it to “Universal Analytics”
- “Account Number”: This number should be generated when you create account
GW 1.3.1
- Once you finish click on “Save Config” button
What is Google Webmaster Tool?
Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) is free software that helps you manage the technical side of your website. The tools are indispensable for SEOs, especially since the various diagnostic reports give straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth insight on everything from broken pages to link penalties. Want to know why your pages can’t be found through search? GWT is a great place to start looking for answers. It’s also Google’s hotline to communicate with website owners. So if any issues or penalties occur with your site, those crucial messages will come to you through Google Webmaster Tools.
In order to know how to create your Google Webmaster Tool account, please check this article.
Outcome
After the end of this article, you should be able to create and link Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools accounts to your store.
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