#frednmt3: What’s the Key Question to ask Yourself as you Evaluate Your Google Analytics??

According to Jeannine Morber of Morber Marketing Group (shown above assisting a New Media Conference attendee) — who presented the Using Google Analytics session at last week’s #FredNMT3 –  the question to ask yourself as you evaluate your Google Analytics is “So what???!!!”

Don’t you love that?? I know I did and do!

What a treat it was to sit in this session. Jeannine’s advice was practical and hands-on; so hands-on in fact she dove right into the Google Analytics dashboard for her own web site and immediately began to decipher what key areas demanded the most attention.

“So what??” Jeannine reminded the audience to ask themselves this question when they bumped into several data nuggets such as, for example, the information revealed via the Map Overlay information. So what if some of the traffic to your site comes from abroad? If you are a local area business, does it really matter that you had two visitors from Sri Lanka to your site in the month of January???

Bottom line: While good to know, not everything reported by Google Analytics is exactly relevant or important.

Some of the more important items to focus as you review your Google Analytics reporting include (but are certainly NOT limited to):

• Content Overview (which details which content areas are most visited on your site)
• Traffic Sources Overview (how is traffic getting to your site? via site referrals, search engines or direct traffic?)

Within each of the two reporting capabilities cited above, there is a wealth of information to be discovered, reviewed and analyzed. For example, in the Traffic Sources dashboard, pay special attention to “Mobile Devices” which will tell you how often your site is being viewed using mobile phones. If this number steadily increases over time, you may wish to consider making some mobile-friendly modifications to your web site to accommodate mobile users who, as we learned from Jon-Mikel Bailey and Beth Schillaci’s #FredNMT3 session, are users *on the go* … their content and speed needs will differ significantly from those who surf your site on their desktops.

If you missed Jeannine’s entertaining and informative Google Analytics session, do not fear. Looks like she’s teaching an Introduction to Google Analytics workshop at the Frederick Community College campus on April 20, 2011 from 6-8pm. Please visit Jeannine’s training page for more information.

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