This document provides an introduction to using Google Analytics for small businesses. It explains key Google Analytics terminology like unique visitors, bounce rate, conversions, and different traffic types. It also covers how to set up goals and funnels to track user behavior and measure success. The document recommends measuring everything possible and making business decisions based on data, and establishes that Google Analytics is a powerful tool for understanding customers by analyzing where they come from, their demographics, and their site behavior.

1. Intro to Google Analytics
From the Small Business
Growth Strategies Series
Presented by

2. "Half the money I spend on
advertising is wasted; the trouble
is I don't know which half.”
- John Wanamaker

3. Sound familiar?

4. The data Wanamaker was lacking
is now readily available, thanks to
analytics tools!

5. As a small business owner, you
should be measuring everything you
can, and most business decisions
should be based on data.

6. Google Analytics is the most popular.
Allows you to measure:
• Visits
• Page Views
• Bounce Rates
• Time Spent on Site
• Marketing Campaigns
• & More

7. Analytics Lingo

8. Unique Visitors
Refer to the number of distinct individuals
viewing a website. For example, if one
person views your website twenty-five
times, it counts as twenty-five views but
only one unique visitor.

9. Bounce Rate
Calculated by measuring the number of
people who leave a website after viewing
the first page divided by the total number of
website visitors. Rule of thumb: the lower
the bounce rate, the better.

10. Conversions
Logged when a visitor completes a goal
you’ve established. (Goals and Funnels are
explained later on in the newsletter.)

11. Types of Traffic
• Direct– Visitors enter URL directly into their
browser.
• Referred – Directed from another website.
• Search Engine– Resulting from showing up
in search engine results pages.

12. Audience Overview

13. The Audience tab
allows you to
determine where
your visitors live,
their age and
gender, how they got
to your site, what
devices they’re
using and much
more.

14. The Overview page shows you statistics like the number of
unique visitors, average visit duration and bounce rate.

15. Demographics and
Interests break down
the age, gender and
interests of your
viewers. This
information is critical
to understanding
your customers.

16. As you go through the other sections, you’ll learn
more and more about your visitors.
For example, in the Geo section you’ll be able to see
where your visitors live.
If you’re a local brick and mortar store, it’s important
to have a local audience. If you’re an ecommerce
platform, you’ll likely want a more geographically
diverse customer base.

17. Campaigns

18. Goals
Google Analytics is all about measuring
visitor activity, so naturally you want to set
up Goals in order to measure your success.

19. Goals
Every time a user completes a defined goal,
a Conversion is logged on your account.
Google breaks goals up into these four
categories.

20. !

21. Goals
Click on Admin ! Goals ! New Goal.
For this example, the full URL destination will be
www.NewSmallBusiness.com/contact.html.

22. Goals
Step 1
You need to choose the type of goal you’re setting
up. For this example, we set up a destination goal.
Since our goal is to get more visitors to the contact
page, we simply named it that.

23. !

24. Goals
Step 2
Choose “Equals to” and enter /contact.html, the
page we’d like visitors to end up on.

25. !

26. Goals
Step 2
There is also a Value option for correlating monetary
value with goals. If new customers spend an average
of $100 and 10% of new visitors end up becoming
customers, give each visit a $10 value.

27. Funnels
The paths that you want visitors to take are
referred to as Funnels. For this example,
let’s say we want a visitor to go from the
Home page to the About page to the
Contact page.

28. !

29. Funnels
You’ll notice that the Required option is off.
This is something that often confuses
people. If you turn the required button on, it
means that visitors must start from the
Home page to be included in the funnel.

30. Funnels
Now click on the Reporting Tab at the top of
your Google Analytics page. Go to
Conversions and click on Funnel Visualization
to check your progress. There’s no data yet
since we just set it up, but this is what the
funnel looks like.

31. There’s no
data yet
since we just
set it up, but
this is what
the funnel
looks like.
!

32. Analytics & AdWords

33. Analytics & AdWords
Linking Google Analytics to your AdWords
account (covered in the last newsletter) will
automatically track the behavior of visitors
who end up on your website as a result of
AdWords campaigns.

34. Analytics & AdWords
If you’re interested in linking the two
accounts, Google describes the
easy 12-step process here.

35. Conclusion

36. Many of the problems businesses, particularly small
businesses, have historically struggled with can be
simplified, and in many cases solved, by
understanding customer tendencies.
Google Analytics is one of the best tools for finding
and analyzing that information.
Conclusion

37. As always, we hope this information has been
valuable and that this series is helping your
small business grow.
If you’d like suggestions for more specific
resources or have any questions, don’t hesitate
to shoot us an email.
Conclusion

38. “We
hope
you
found
this
informa2on
useful.
If
there
are
any
other
topics
you’d
like
to
see
us
cover,
please
let
us
know.
And
if
taking
this
approach
helps
your
small
business
succeed,
we’d
love
to
hear
about
it.
You
can
reach
us
at
support@acuityscheduling.com!” Acuity Scheduling
@AcuitySchedulin

39. Acuity Scheduling is an online scheduling platform that
saves thousands of small businesses time by allowing their
customers to book appointments online, on their own time,
at any time, from anywhere in the world. For more
information about services and pricing, visit
AcuityScheduling.com.
About Acuity Scheduling