Tinkering with Google Analytics

I finally managed to  learn some of the fundas  behind Google Analytics.Although  I was still searching for a domain of mine own to learn about this service, A friend of mine  offered me to help by sharing his portal's  data for starters.This was certainly a blessing in disguise for me since Ive been trying to get a hands on experience on the same for a very long time now. My only thought was to learn the know- how of utilizing the servicing to the best and henceforth optimize my blog accordingly.

I still use a third party analytic service which can cater to only some of the basic parameters of visitor numbers,but perhaps Google Analytics will provide more insights into visitor trends?My first day while I spend some time on it meant it definitely does!



I am no freak for getting more traffic to my blog, but my curiosity for  technology and web trends drives me to learn and explore these new spheres.While I still regularly use  the AJAX based goingup.com, I wanted to find the variations in  the feature set between these two services. While  some of the options in both of them might be generic in nature, digging into the site,I find some new and interesting options to tinker with. Browsers,OSe's,Visitor locations all of them might be available in most of the services we find these days. Some new features which I found in this service :

Visitor Loyality:

Useful to assess   a Visitor's nth visit to the same page or site.  User's attachment to a brand or a blog  will bring him back repeatedly to the same site.Quite a useful feature to know about the kind of visitor's who visit your site in the longterm.It explains some parameters like length,recency and depth of Visits(Page Views)



Map Overlay:

Providing county wise breakup of visitors,including returning visits and unique visits,the advanced search filter will help in providing country specific web traffic trends .Performance and web traffic comparisions between various geographic location should give us an Idea of where our site is more visible and where it is not.



Monitoring your Ad words and TV campaigns :

Maintaining and monitoring your monetary spending  on the site and checking for your ROI,useful if you use your site  in conjunction with Google Ad words and  track your make ting campaigns.This is something new which I find here and should definitely learn more about them at the right time.

Content Segementation and Optimization :

Another new feature which I found in GA.This feature should provide the way in which your visitors found your site,the most clicked  segments within a single page and  navigation paths which lead visitors to your landing page. Considering all these parameters while we  re-design our  website or making  it more visible for search engines though SEO should be an added advantage.



Goal Conversions and Search Engine Referrals

While I would not want to concentrate on Goals and Custom Variables since I have no intention of  putting up Monetary elements within the my blog,I choose to ignore it for the time being. Search Engine referrals are intriguing in nature.While I completely don't know how Google and Bing crawl for information, I understand that in some ways their algorithms may be Organic.Page ranking and "Decision" based search   referrals  make a  little difference in getting to your site.



I might learn more about this when I get it on my blog, but till then this little learning experience is definitely a head-start.