Google Analytics: An essential tool for your digital strategy?

What is the point of using Google Analytics as an analysis tool for your website?

Google Analytics is the platform to connect to your site regardless of the needs. Even if it is not the “root” tool of a site, it will still allow access to interesting data on the behavior of users of your site. Knowing where your users come from and what pages they are browsing is pretty interesting isn't it?

So what exactly is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a web analysis tool from Google that provides detailed statistics on website traffic and on the sources of that traffic. It helps people with a website to understand how visitors interact with their site, offering information on the most visited pages, user behavior, and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

This tool is an element to take into account for monitoring site performance, optimizing content, and understanding the target audience, thus facilitating decision-making to improve its online presence.

In short, Google Analytics is a tool that allows you to know a little more about your target audience, their behavior and their traffic sources.

Focus on the functionalities of the tool

Google Analytics: a lot of analytics tracking data in connection with the different types of traffic acquisition, the type of audience but also information on the different places of the site that is visited.

To find out more about the features in their details, refer to the list below:

Identifying traffic sources

To know where visitors come from, but it also allows us to understand which platforms or webmarketing sources bring the most visitors to the site.
Thanks to this data, we are in a position to analyze the results related to a marketing campaign. For example, if you launch an emailing campaign, Google Analytics will be favorable for reading the figures that will have brought traffic to the website.

In Google Analytics, you should refer to the “Acquisition” tab, and more particularly to ”Traffic acquisition”, and go find the table that summarizes all the traffic sources available to land on the site in question. For the various sources you will find:

• Organic traffic, or SEO (coming from search engines)
• Paid traffic, or SEA (like paid ads on Google or other platforms)
• Referral traffic (links from other sites)
• Social traffic (social networks)
• And direct traffic (users entering the site URL directly).

Each of its sources, whether they come from the entire site directly or whether they are set up or linked to a particular page, allows you to know more about the impact of its content.

In summary, it is a use case that allows us to learn more about the data provided other than by organic traffic (traffic generated directly via search engines), which we find more easily and precisely within the Google Search Console.

Audience segmentation

Audience segmentation in Google Analytics makes it possible to find users into different segments based on several specific criteria such as buying behavior, demographics, acquisition channels, site behavior, etc.

This segmentation not only allows you to better understand who your users are on your site, but also to be able to identify them and then launch marketing campaigns of your choice.

This part can be found in real time but also on selected dates. Again, this is a feature that allows accurate traffic tracking. With the implementation of a webmarketing campaign or if you have made site optimizations, you can follow the numbers and decide whether or not to have an impact related to this campaign.

In the “audience” section we find data such as:

• The users
• The new users
• The number of sessions
• The duration of sessions

Combined with these data, one of the most interesting parts remains the information on their geographical areas but also demographics. This data is very useful to us when we work on sites with several languages, or if we want to know our acquisitions for a particular age group, for example.

The audience part also offers information on the type of device used by our users: mobile, desktop or tablet. This data is very useful to understand their behavior.

Bounce rate and session length‍

This data may seem trivial like that, but is nevertheless very interesting in some use cases. To explain where we are going with this, first of all we are going to explain to you: what is the bounce rate and the duration of the session?

• ‍Bounce rate: The bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who leave the site after viewing a single page. ‍
• Session length: Session length measures the average time spent on the site by visitors.

What can we deduce from this data and when should it be used?

A high bounce rate may indicate that the content on the page is not relevant to the audience or that the page does not meet visitors' expectations. It may also reflect poor navigation or user experience. Analyzing the bounce rate per page can help identify pages that need improvement.

We consider that a good bounce rate is a page with a maximum of 40% bounce rate (this will mean that the page has been visited enough to appear relevant in the eyes of Google).

However, you must be careful with this data, which can remain very subjective. For example, a short form or a contact will easily have a very high bounce rate because the person will clearly not have to stay on the page for a long time. However, this does not mean that it was futile.

Like this example, you must be careful with this data because each type of page has a different length or function, which will necessarily alter the result of this data and the behaviors of users.

As for the duration of the session, we are on a somewhat similar analysis but more accurate and safer. A longer duration may indicate higher engagement and a deeper interest in the content offered. By comparing the duration of sessions between different pages, one can determine which sections of the site captivate users the most.

In one of our use cases, we will try to see what is the duration of the session of a long-running page such as the home page for example, to ensure its relevance and its well built.

Note that now, the bounce rate is a data that must be added by yourself on GA4, via the customization of the report in Acquisition > Acquisition by traffic. It should also be noted that the bounce rate is in other words the opposite of the engagement rate currently present on the platform.

Constant evolution of the interface

The problem with the interface? Everything. Their interface is constantly changing and you get lost. In addition, we are not going to lie to each other, it is not necessarily a very clear navigation: ergonomics are not there. In short, it's becoming confusing for users who don't really know anything about data analysis and even for us who are used to a previous version. New features and the reorganization of menus constantly require time to adapt and become annoying to use.

Platform that does not reflect the data at the root of a site

Google Analytics has limits in its ability to provide accurate data about every visitor and every interaction on a website.

Here are a few reasons why this can be a problem:

• Blocking cookies: More and more web browsers have implemented features to block third-party cookies, which may prevent Google Analytics from tracking users comprehensively. This can lead to an underestimation of the real number of visitors and a loss of data.
• Javascript disabled: Some users disable JavaScript in their browsers, which prevents the Google Analytics tracking code from working properly. This means that their interactions are not recorded, which can lead to data loss.
• Adblockers: Users who use ad blockers can also block Google Analytics tracking, which may affect data collection.
• Slow loading speed: If the Google Analytics tracking code doesn't load quickly on a page, it may not have time to capture all of the user's data before the user leaves the page.
• Limits of follow-up: There are intrinsic limitations to web tracking, including the difficulty of tracking users who move from one device to another or who delete their cookies regularly.

Our opinion on the Google Analytics platform

The Google Analytics platform makes it possible to analyze and find quite interesting information on traffic sources, where they come from and how they are used. For our part, we configure all new sites to this platform in any case because it transmits additional data to much more concrete tools such as the GSC. It also simply gives the power to bring up data from certain marketing campaigns by tagging plan, which cannot be very useful because it would be directly connected to Google Tag Manager.

Otherwise, as seen above: big red flag in relation to the non-precision of the data. Some are incomplete or do not reflect reality when compared with other platforms such as the GSC, which is the root tool of the site.

The poor ergonomics of the platform is also quite repulsive to its use, however a shame because data tables and reports are possible, but are difficult to use.

How much does Google Analytics cost?

We explain everything to you, in simple terms there are two possibilities:

Free Google Analytics: There is a free version of Google Analytics that offers a lot of basic features for tracking and analyzing web traffic. This version is available to anyone with a Google account.

Google Analytics 360: This is the paid version of Google Analytics, intended primarily for large businesses and businesses with advanced analytics needs. The cost of Google Analytics 360 is $50,000 per year or $4,166 per month.
Payment options depend on which version you choose. For the free version, no payment is required.

For Google Analytics 360, you can opt for an annual or monthly payment depending on your preference and needs.