Yep so if you run a site and have a vague interest in how visits for it are going along, likelihood is that your using Google Analytics. It’s no surprise the tool is the most commonly used analytics service by start-ups and new business given it’s really thorough collation of data. 

It does have its downsides though and sometimes the most useful statistics are hard to dig out of the service. Spent allot of time this week using the service and during my search for wisdom I’ve stumbled across the following great techniques to really dig out the useful data:

4 Power Tips for Tracking Behaviour.

4 great tweaks you can make to the google script to get it to monitor users resizing the browser ( e.g. your site may be to fat on the screen and require scrolling ), whether sliders or clicks work better, tracking of usage and cold feet while users are completing forms.

How to View Regional Search traffic in Google Analytics.

This handy if you have a large international base of visitors and you want to be able to SEO for a specific regional audience then being able to only track visits or referrals from Google UK then this little trick will help you create a neat filter to dig deeper into the specific data.

Track the Impact of Tweets, Likes and +1s.

The net is full of social networks and its becoming increasingly important to be able to demonstrate that the investment and resources in having a presence on these services is beneficial to business. Well this is more of a “did you know” but Google Analytics now tracks the social interactions on your site

Power User Guide

Last but not least if your really into the stuff then take some time to really understand Google Analytics by visiting their help centre. It’s interesting to understand how Google not only tracks traffic but also how it defines it. The definitions may not be tracking what you expected so have a look and also have a look at this guide. Tracking broken links, slow pages and optimising the default reports is just as important.

These 4 links should get you well on the way but be aware that the service changes usually for the best but as it changes, be sure to see how you can use the new features to your advantage to inform your own marketing or communication objectives.