British accents explain why you need Google Analytics

First things first: yes, the following video came out in 2012. It is “old.”

And no, I don’t care, because it beautifully illustrates the frustration of shopping an e-commerce site that doesn’t have its crap together. Tell me you haven’t had an online experience similar to this one before:

Obviously, the takeaway here is that you wouldn’t be an annoying jerkface to your customers in real life, so why do it online?

Since this is an ad for Google Analytics, though, the other takeaway is that GA can help you track where you might be losing customers in the conversion process.

[caption id=”attachment_915” align=”aligncenter” width=”350”] via semclubhouse.com[/caption]

Although Google Analytics can sometimes be frustrating to maneuver (and has annoyed longtime users with recent changes), it is worth the time setting it up on your site, as it can be used for a variety of purposes. For example, I use it to track traffic on this blog, so I can see what’s working with readers and what isn’t.

If I want to know what the traffic was like during a certain time period on a certain blog post, I first adjust the desired date/s at the top right of the dashboard, as indicated by the shaky blue arrow below. (I’m new to Photoshop. Clearly.)

After selecting the desired date range, I find my way down the list of tabs at left to Content Drilldown by clicking Behavior > Site Content > Content Drilldown.

If I don’t see the blog post I’m looking for, I adjust the number of rows shown in the bottom right corner.

I then click on the blog post I want to see data on, which will show me how many pageviews and unique pageviews it has, as well as the bounce and exit rates.

But if I want to see where exactly that traffic came from, I look above the title of the blog post to Secondary Dimension > Acquisition > Source.

From there, I can see how many visitors came to that blog post from Facebook, Twitter, other blogs, etc. It will even let me know if that traffic was from a mobile site.

This is really just the beginning of what GA is capable of, and I myself have tons to learn before I can say I use the tool to its full advantage.

In the meantime, I’m going to rewatch the video above because British accents are seriously the best.