7 Things Google Analytics CAN Do for a Webmaster?
#1. Keep Track of Real-time Traffic
Google Analytics not only allows you to see who has visited your website in the past, it also allows you to see how many people are currently visiting your website. Go to Real-Time reports to see the number of people visit and leave your site, and see how they engage with your content.
#2. Number of Website Visitors
Though it’s impossible for you to know exactly who is visiting your website, the Audience Report allows you to learn a lot about these people, including their age, gender, hobbies, occupation and location. This information can be used to target them in an email campaign or online advertising, as well as to customize content to gain more attention.
#3. What Visitors Are Looking For On Your Website
If there’s a search feature on your website, the Site Search extension of Google Analytics will tell you which keywords are being entered into the search box by your visitors, and whether they’ll find what they’re looking for.
Use Google Analytics to see which links are visited the most.
#4. Show You What Your Visitors Are Clicking On
The In-Page Analytics extension of Google shall list all the internal links on your website and show you which ones are visited the most by your visitors, so you know where to place your important Call-to-Actions and which pages need to be updated for increased connectivity.
#5. How Visitors Access Your Website
The Users Flow report of Google can show you how your visitors experienced your website, including where they started, how many people clicked on another page, how many people left your site and in which order your pages were viewed.
#6. Content Evaluation
Under section Behavior of Google Analytics, select Site Content, then All Pages to see the list of all websites by number of views in descending order. You can arrange the list by pageviews, average time on page, number of visitors to your site through a page, etc.
#7. Let You Know If A Mobile-friendly Website Is Necessary
Fortunately, your website is already mobile-friendly. But even if it’s not, the Mobile (Devices) section in the Audience Report will tell you what devices your visitors are using to access your website and what percentage of them are smartphones or tablets.
4 Things Google Analytics CAN’T Do?
#1. Who Visited Your Website?
Google Analytics can tell you a lot about the people who visit your website, but it won’t tell you who they are. You’ll know how old they are, where they live and many more, but you won’t know their names, their IP addresses, their companies or any other personally identifiable information.
#2. View The Usage Data Of Your Website Before Setting Up Google Analytics
With Google Analytics, you can only view the data created from the moment you started tracking your website—you can’t go back in time and view the traffic and other information from before Google Analytics was set up.
#3. See What Your Visitors Do On Other Websites
You can get extremely detailed information about what a visitor does on your website, including what pages they visited, how long they stayed there, what buttons they clicked on, etc., but once they leaves your site, you won’t be able to track the sites they’ll visit and their behaviors there anymore.
Google Analytics will give you information about what people do on your website, not what they do on other sites or what those sites are.
#4. Keep Track of Users Who Don’t Want To Be Tracked
Google Analytics uses cookies and JavaScript to track the number of visitors to a page. If a visitor disables them or enables the “do not track” plugin or extension, Google Analytics will not be able to track that visitor’s behaviors on your website.