You've researched your audience. You've created awesome content. You're ready to launch your digital marketing campaign. However, all your efforts will be in vain if you don't have a solid analytics system in place from the start.

According to Renolon, more than half of all websites use Google Analytics, which has the largest market share at 30 percent (Statista data) of any analytics platform. This alone shows the importance of Google Analytics as a platform.

Until 2020, Google's platform was known as Universal Analytics (UA). This is now being replaced by Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and UA will be phased out by 2023. It is therefore important to understand what has changed and make sure your business is already using GA4 to ensure you don't lose data or insights. Read 'A guide to GA4 versus Universal Analytics' to find out everything you need to know.

What is web analytics?

Web analytics involves the collection, measurement and analysis of website data. Web analytics tools can provide a lot of useful information about where website traffic comes from, how website users navigate and interact on a website, what content and web pages they are most interested in, and how they leave the site.

What is the importance of Google Analytics?

There are many reasons why the use of analytics tools is a no-brainer for today's digital marketers. Here are three of the most important reasons:

Helping you make data-driven decisions

Marketers can use the data uncovered by analytics tools to optimise the performance of their channels and websites by making data-driven decisions.

These are actions we take to improve performance based on our understanding of the data we have recorded - in other words, the data drives the decision. For example, if you find that one of your blogs is getting a lot of traffic, optimise the page to make the most of it by adding pop-ups and including links to other related articles.

Using data is an effective way to use rational thinking to improve performance. While it is good practice to follow data-driven decisions, we must always remind ourselves to "trust but verify".

Facilitates reporting.

In addition to assisting with decision making, web analytics is an important source of information to help marketers inform key stakeholders about the performance of campaigns and websites in relation to their digital marketing efforts.

Ultimately, marketers try to recreate scenarios that lead to business outcomes for their organisations or customers. You can do this by measuring and acting on the data trends you observe using web analytics software.

Helps you uncover the "story" behind the data

Web analytics tools

There are numerous analysis tools available on the market today. Some of them are free and others require a paid subscription. Paid and free analytics products will differ in terms of support, features and functionality.

Examples of analysis packages that are available include:

• Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360, which are part of the Google Marketing Platform
• adobe analysis
• Woopra
• Kissmetrics
• Web trends
• Matomo

What are the benefits of Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is an excellent choice for most marketing needs. Some benefits of the standard and free version of Google Analytics include:

• It is free of charge
• It is easy to implement and install.
• It has a user-friendly interface.
• It offers customisable reports, dashboards and data collection.
• It offers basic and advanced options.
• It offers seamless integration with other Google products.
• Offers post-click integration with non-Google traffic sources such as Facebook, Yahoo and Bing.
• It provides extensive and valuable information on web behaviour.

For more informative content don't forget to subscribe to our Newsletter.