This time I'm writing about "access analytics." Access analytics tends to conjure up an image of rows and rows of numbers and graphs that feel hard to approach, doesn't it? I felt the same way at first.

It's true that there's a lot you can do with access analytics, and trying to learn it all on your own can leave you completely lost… but! This time I'll tell you "only" the parts you want to know — the parts you can actually use to attract customers — so please take a look.

Not an access counter — Google Analytics.

Every now and then, customers who want to know how many people are viewing their website ask us to "add an access counter." Access counters — quite nostalgic, aren't they?

As many of you probably know, an access counter is a meter-like feature that automatically counts and displays how many people have visited a website (more precisely, how many times it has been viewed). Of course, it's still technically possible to install an access counter on a website today. However, as convenient as it is, it also has several drawbacks.

For example, an access counter simply counts the number of visits to the website, so if one person views it many times, each view is added to the count, and views by the site administrator or, in the case of a company site, by employees and other related parties (people who aren't customers) are counted as well.
So even if the access counter shows a big number and you think, "Lots of people are looking at my site!", that doesn't necessarily mean customers — it isn't an accurate indicator.

Also, if the displayed number is small, it may give visitors the unflattering impression that "this website doesn't get many views…" (ouch!)

On top of that, with the times changing, access counters have become a much rarer sight lately.

That's why we recommend an access analytics tool called [Google Analytics]. Or rather than recommend — we embed it in every website we produce at Merci from the very start, so many of our clients can already use it (our apologies to clients whose sites were built some time ago and don't have it embedded).

As the name suggests, Google Analytics is a tool provided by the major search engine Google, and anyone with a Google account can use it — and for free at that.
It can measure a wide variety of numbers and information, so in our industry, when it comes to access analytics, almost everyone uses Google Analytics.

Google Analytics even lets you see things like this!

So let's take a look at what kinds of numbers and information you can actually see in Google Analytics.
As I mentioned earlier, trying to use every single feature makes it hard to remember everything, so this time I'll cover only the parts our clients ask about — "I want to know this; how do I check it?" — and the parts I use most often myself.

1. Basic information such as the number of visits

The first is basic information such as the number of visits. This applies both when viewing this basic information and when viewing any other data, but in Google Analytics you first set the period you want to look at. For example, you can set various periods such as the last 7 days, the last 30 days, the previous week, or last month. If you choose the "Custom" option, you can freely change the period simply by clicking dates on the calendar that appears.

Once you've set the period, let's start looking at the data. As basic information, you can check things about your website such as:

・How many times it was viewed
・How many people viewed it

and more. In addition, you can also find out:

・How many pages were viewed in total
・How many pages are viewed on average per visit
・Average time on site
・The percentage of people who left after viewing only one page
・The ratio of new visitors to returning visitors

and so on. Impressive, isn't it?
An amount of information incomparable to an access counter can be viewed easily, all on a single page, as basic information.

2. Search keywords

Wouldn't you like to know what keywords the visitors to your website searched for to find their way there? Of course, you can check this in Google Analytics too. It's displayed as a ranking from most frequent to least, and while some keywords make you think, "Ah, of course, this one is common," you'll also find quite a few that make you go, "Wow! People are finding my site because of this?!"

Looking at search keywords tells you what visitors needed when they came to your site, and when you update the site, you can shape the content by taking into account not only the seller's perspective but also what customers are thinking and looking for.

This can be the trigger for achieving results efficiently, so by all means, take a look at these search keywords.

3. What devices they're using to view it

Do you know what device your customers use to view your website?

"Our customers are mainly corporate clients, so it's got to be mostly computers, right?"
"We deal with general consumers and have a lot of female customers, so isn't it smartphones?"

Is that really……… the case………?

This, too, can be checked in Google Analytics. As with search keywords, there are quite a few cases where "I expected this, but the actual data was completely different!", so this is another item I'd really like you to check.
The data on what device your customers use to view your website is actually quite important.
Because if you assume "most of our customers view it on a computer" when in reality more people view it on a smartphone, you'll need to shift your focus to smartphones.

It's a common story: without checking the data, someone assumes "more people use computers," focuses only on how the site looks on a computer when making updates, and in reality that version is barely viewed, while the smartphone version, which was hardly maintained at all, is the one getting the views.

And to say something a little harsh: even when most customers are viewing on smartphones, you yourself — or someone senior at your company — may be a feature-phone user who shies away, saying "I don't really get smartphones." I'm not going to insist you force yourself to understand something you don't, but if you think about it from the customer's point of view… you already know the answer, don't you?

The information in Google Analytics confronts you with reality, with no room for sentiment.
If you're serious about using this information to build a website that's easy for customers to view and that gets them interested, then get past your dislikes and take it to heart sincerely.

4. How and where they came from

Many people run external blogs (such as Hamazo or Ameblo) or social media accounts (such as Facebook or Twitter) in order to get more customers to see their website and turn that into business.

However, few people actually collect data on how much those external blogs and social media accounts ultimately contributed to attracting customers, or how much traffic they drove to the website, which holds far more information — wouldn't you agree?

With Google Analytics, you can check "how" and "from where" visitors arrived at your website.

First, regarding the "how" part, this means:

・Did they come via organic search (keyword searches on Google, Yahoo!, etc.)?
・Did they click a link somewhere?
・Did they come via social media?
・Did they come from a bookmark or by typing the URL directly?

These are displayed as a ranking in order of the number of visits, so one look tells you everything.

And the "where they came from" part refers to which search engine they used in the case of organic search, which site's link they clicked in the case of a referral, and which social network they came through in the case of social media.

Of course, you can also see the share of each "how" as a proportion of total visits, the number of visits, the percentage of people who left after viewing only one page, the ratio of new to returning visitors, and more.

In short, what I'm getting at is that looking at this shows you which customer acquisition methods are effective and which ones aren't doing much for you (since this article is about Google Analytics, "useful or not" here is measured in terms of traffic driven to your website).

With so many tools around these days, taking on and running every single one of them is tough.
But if you run them while checking the numbers and information in Google Analytics, you can quickly cut your losses on tools that don't bring in customers and concentrate your efforts on the ones that do.

If you want to attract customers efficiently and grow your sales efficiently, take this opportunity to put Google Analytics to work.

To start using Google Analytics…

Finally, as for "so what do I actually have to do to be able to view Google Analytics?" — to view Google Analytics, you need to embed the Google Analytics [tag] in your website.

At the beginning of this section, I wrote that anyone with a Google account can use it. That's true, but unless Google Analytics is installed on your website in the first place, you won't be able to see anything.

So what should you do first? Contact Merci.
If your website doesn't have the tag embedded, we'll handle the work of embedding it for you.

If the tag is already embedded but you don't know how to view the data, or it isn't set up so you can view it, please get in touch with us either way. We'll check your current settings and arrange things so you can view the data yourself.