Arguably the single best free tool available to marketers is Google Analytics. If you know how to use it, it can tell you so much about your customers, how they are using your website, what they’re interested in, and what is causing them issues.
However, no tool is perfect. And no tool can do everything you need it to. Even something as impactful as Google Analytics must come with a few words of warning.
To get the most out of the tool, you have to first understand what it is telling you. And with a tool as powerful as Google Analytics, the biggest fear is in assuming everyone will read the data in the same way.
One Statistic, Multiple Interpretations
Let’s look at an example:
Your team is reviewing the most popular conversion paths on your website and you find that people landing on one specific page are returning to the previous page at a high rate. This is something that Google Analytics can show you quite clearly. You can see the click paths, and so you know where they are coming from and where they are going next.
It’s obvious, in this case, that there is a problem worth correcting. Something about that page is not working. – Read more
