In the age of digitalization, your small business may be losing out if you aren’t using Google Analytics. Like most tasks in your business, it’s easy to make excuses as to why you’ll set up your account later. After reading this two-part guide, hopefully you’ll understand why it’s so important that you start today.

Why is the Google Analytics tool essential for your small business?

Try thinking of your website the same way you would a brick and mortar store. If you sell your goods and services both online and in a physical location, your website actually is your digital storefront. If you’re monitoring the store, many things you may want to keep track of include:

1. Unique visitors — This is the number of unique people that visit your store daily. If only a few people are visiting your store each day, you know there’s a problem somewhere in your current strategy.
2. Time on page / Time spent in store — The average time each person spends in your store can tell you a lot. Surely you know that feeling when you see someone walk into your brick and mortar store only to leave a few minutes later. The more time spent inside drastically raises the probability of a purchase.
3. Traffic sources / How customers found you — If you’re advertising or hoping to spread awareness through five outlets and your customers are only finding or hearing about your store through two outlets, wouldn’t you want to know that?
4. Page views / What customers are looking at — This might be one of the most important items to track. If you’ve built an enormous display in your store and your visitors are totally ignoring it, you’ll know that you need to rearrange your display or reorganize your resources.

These are just a few, real-life examples, but they all translate into information that Google Analytics provides for your website. Stay tuned for part two of our Google Analytics blog series. We’ll share several key metrics you can use to help keep track of the factors above, as well as the next steps you should take.