Free Ecommerce Software Information – Google Analytics Content Overview

Continuing our series of articles on free ecommerce software information and tools, we look further at what Google Analytics has to offer. Google Analytics is a powerful resource for online merchants that provides statistics and information that they can use to tweak and optimize their stores. Because of the abundance of information available from the various features available on Analytics, merchants are better able to understand current trends as well as foresee future trends (to a certain extent). Google Analytics is a useful tool that will benefit a home based online business opportunity seeker.

The free ecommerce software information available not only saves merchants a lot of time and resources when carrying out research, it also makes planning marketing campaigns easier. In this article we will take a look at the Content Overview feature of Google Analytics.

First Glance

First of all, notice how everything fits nicely into the first/top fold of the page so that users do not need to scroll to view further free ecommerce software information. Also notice how the page is pleasant to look at. No gaudy colors and everything is well laid out – a very good example of effective simplicity. It is certainly something that home business opportunity Internet entrepreneurs should take note of.

Graph

At the top of the Content Overview page, there’s a graph that can be set to display Pageviews, Unique Pageviews, Average Time on Page, Bounce Rate, Exit and $ Index. The default “views” setting for the graph is set to One Metric but if you want, you can set it to Compare Two Metrics and even to Compare to Site. You can further customize the graph by choosing to view it either by Day, Week or Month.

By viewing graphs mapped with different criteria, merchants can discover trends easily. For example, daily Pageviews can reveal which days garner the most views (unique or total). Merchants can then decide to make the most of these heavy visit days by offering special discounts or offers to encourage better sales.

Other Features

Below the graph is a quick display of Pageviews and Bounce Rates. Clicking on these links will bring up information with more detail including specific pages and associated figures. You can easily detect which pages are most popular by means of visits, time spent and bounce rates. Bounce rate statistics can help you identify pages that aren’t convincing customers to continue shopping at your site, so you can look at these specific pages to improve site “stickiness” as well as increase conversion rates.

To the right of the page are links to entrance paths, entrance sources, and entrance keywords. This information lets a merchant know how visitors are coming to their site and what keywords lead them there. This information will let you know what keywords and marketing strategy works for your site and also, more importantly, what does not work. This will help reduce inefficient marketing efforts and thus save resources.

Finally, under the Click Patterns caption lies a very useful link: the Site Overlay link. This link lets you view your site with tiny boxes located next to every link – buttons, text and images. The figures in these boxes tell you at once which links are popular and which aren’t. If you run a web store selling NFL merchandise, using the Site Overlay tool will easily tell you which team pages and merchandise receive the most attention. This will help you plan product allocation as well as inventory more efficiently.

When using these tools, take a overall high-level view of things before analyzing the information piece-by-piece. Avoid this step and you might miss the big picture. Utilizing Analytics statistics once you have a strong grasp of your store’s direction and marketing strategy will only improve your site’s attractiveness and sales.

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