Google Analytics - free online web analytics | The 3-year-old web application, created by Google after acquiring Urchin Software, that allows businesses to make better decisions with respect to their web applications.
1. Start with the correct user account
Since Google Analytics (GA) is a free tool that processes incoming tracking data on-the-fly, but there is no way to bulk transfer data between accounts. Setting up a long-term email address for your account is crucial, especially if you don’t want to keep multiple sets of data around in the future. Create a generic account based on your domain called google@domain.com - then simply use your ISP to forward that address to the appropriate one.

2. Configure tracking code properly
Garbage in = Garbage Out. Take an hour to sketch out each piece of your website, including multiple domains, multiple hosts, off-domain widgets (Inntopia) and conversion methods. Setting up your tracking code correctly from the outset will save countless hours of analysis & second guessing in the future.

3. Filter your own traffic (and that of your vendors)
If you owned a retail store and counted daily drive-up traffic, you wouldn’t include your employees’ and vendors’ vehicles in that count would you (unless you were calculating parking lot needs)? Then why track the traffic from your internal visitors, employees, telecommuters, web developer and vendors? Implementing filters ‘cleans up’ your visitor data before it is processed in GA.

4. Have a Goal
li you don t have a goal, then how do you know when things are gettine) better ^or worse;.’ uAgives you the ability to track four goals in a profile, and virtually unlimited goals if you use multiple profiles. With Goal tracking setup, you can use GA to determine successes and failures of campaigns: email, banner ad, organic SEO, radio, television and PayPerClick. Comparing goal results with actual spending on those campaigns and modifying your course is the rough definition of decision support - Google Analytics helps you decide what to do next.

Download pdf Seven Steps to a Better Google Analytics