The Profitability of Google Analytics Options
As opposed to other Web Analytics Options, like Hitslink, Google Analytics Options is a free product. Starting its life of as Urchin, Google them out in 2005, restructured the product and renamed it Google Analytics Options. It was initially offered free to AdWord users, then later to the general public.
Why does Google Analytics Options offer?
If all you are looking for is monitoring tool which will tell you how many people are using or visiting your website, and how they got there, then Google Analytics Options is ideal. Used by anyone with a website, bloggers and/or webmasters find it invaluable in monitoring traffic and gaining information like the loyalty of the visitor, in other words, how long they stay on your site, and how many times they return.
It can show what they are actually searching for, or what they are reading on your site and can show what parts or pages of your site they visited, how long they stayed there and from which traffic source they came.
A traffic source may be ‘direct’, that is your visitor came straight to your URL and not through any kind of search, or link. Another traffic source is called ‘referring’ which shows which visitors were sent to you from other sites via links. Search Engines qualify as a traffic source and Google Analytics Options will show how many people find your site via a Search Engine, and which one.
How does Google Analytics Options Work?
After installing the application, each time you open Google Analytics Options you will be presented with what is called a “Dashboard”. It is very simply a graph which shows the evolution of traffic on your site over a certain period of time which can be set for long periods, or a specific day.
There is also an option that shows page views, unique views and bounce rate. A bounce rate shows when a visitor leaves a page or site without visiting any other site within a specified time span, so this will able to tell if the visitor found what they are looking for on your site, or whether they are still searching.
With this type of valuable information, you can optimise your site, or blog to attract more visitors.
Does Google Share your Data?
Google holds itself in very high regard with regard to user trust and user experience and as such offers customers the option to either ‘opt in’ and share their data with Google, or choose the anonymous data sharing option. The reason for sharing data is that it helps Google improve their services by creating more powerful services for the end user. However, these features, as they become available, are only available to those who ‘opt in’ to share their data.
If the anonymous option is chosen, Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, and then combine that data with hundreds of other anonymous sites who are in similar industries and report them back as an aggregate
Google Analytics Options offers the user a choice of whether to share data publicly or and a such uses
This data sharing policy enables us to improve two things Our goal is to provide customers with transparency, choice, and an improved product experience., it will be used to generally improve the products we provide you. However, it will not affect a customer’s own account without an additional step of explicit approval for each affected product or service
Possible Difficulties That Can Occur With ROI Tools
A ROI Tool, or Return on Investment Tool, is an analytical tool used to calculate what benefit can be expected on an investment, or expenditure. But it is not as simple as that however, and difficulties can be experienced not only in the design, but also when implementing it and putting it to work.
A ROI Tool is typically used by companies who provide high-cost products. It is a sales tool used to provide prospective clients with enough factual, mathematical and financial information in order for them to make an informed decision on whether to invest, or not.
Achieving Success
The success of a ROI Tool starts with the sales and marketing teams. It is vital that they commit right from the beginning to building, promoting and developing a ROI System. Another element to success is that once the ROI System has been implemented, it needs to be trained to others throughout the organization. So, right away, this shows that without the sales force as well as management ‘buy in’, or training, the ROI Tool will not be used to its optimum and may not benefit a company.
Possible Difficulties
There are a host of reasons why difficulties can and are experienced with ROI Tools. One reason is that a ROI Tool may not be treated as a product and therefore its benefits are underestimated, misunderstood, not used to its optimum, or simply ignored. Some companies spend time, money and effort in developing their ROI Tool, and then leave it at that stage.
They do not conduct any further investigation into what the sales force require of it, and this may result in there being no further modifications, testing or development to the ROI System which may, ultimately result in not being used to its optimum by the sales force. If this happens the ROI Tool may get a bad reputation, or worse it gets neglected, and withers away.
Another notable reason is that the ROI Tool is difficult to use, or explain, not only to partners of the company, but also to future sales prospects, or customers. Trying to justify economic concepts is difficult enough to begin with and a lot of ROI Tools are weighed down with unrelated entities, or bits needed to operate it, which only adds to the perception that it is complex and difficult to use or understand, and if not trained properly, is unfortunately the case.
Missing it with the Prospect
In some instances, salespeople are not trained properly on the ROI System and don’t know how to use it in a confident manner, showing the client believable data, and the client may then become suspicious of it. Confidence must come from the sales team who should have a very clear understanding of the tool themselves in order to relay this to the client.
To answer the potential clients question of “what return will I get from my investment”, will rely on whether or not the data is believable to the client, and just buy implementing the tool at the beginning of a products lifecycle, could make it easier to answer their question.
