Google Analytics is a powerful tool, but most users do not even scratch the surface of what it can do. A few simple changes in the Google Analytics interface can activate reports and features that are much more useful than the default setup. We recommend enabling the following 5 features:
1. Content Grouping
How many users viewed pages in the “About Us” section of your site compared to the “News” or “Services” sections? Content grouping allows you to easily compare how different sections of your website perform.
You can create content groups tailored to how your website is organized in your View Settings.
2. Site Search
What are your users entering into the search form on your website? What do they do after searching? To answer these questions, you’ll need to enable and configure Site Search Tracking in your View Settings.
3. Bot Filtering
Referral spam is a nuisance and creates deformations of your analytics data. Enable the “Bot Filtering” feature in your View Settings to remove traffic from known spammers from your reports.
4. Product Linking
Link your Google Analytics property to other Google services to share data between these services. Linking Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) adds useful Search Engine Optimization reports to Google Analytics. Linking AdWords enables AdWords reports in Google Analytics that measure the performance of your AdWords campaigns.
5. Advertising Features
Enabling Advertising Features activates the Demographics and Interest Reports. Google Analytics gathers data from advertising cookies to create user profiles, and then provides you with aggregated data about who your users are and what interests them. Note: you also need to make a change to your Google Analytics tracking code to enable advertising features.
Just a few changes in Google Analytics can activate many more useful reports and features. If you need help configuring these features, send me an email.
Title Image Credit: http://workcompass.com/
