There is a ton of information that is available to you through your Google Analytics account. In order to use this information to better your website and improve your weaknesses you first need to understand what it all means. There is so much to know that I can't possibly cover it all here, but I will address some of the areas I find helpful in my Google Analytics account.
Your Visitors
In your Google Analytics dashboard, click on "Visitors" on the left. This will bring up a screen which typically displays the number of visitors on your website (you can customize this to specify exactly what information you want to see by default). The two reports under Visitors that I find very helpful are "Visitor Loyalty" and "Browser Capability." Knowing who your customers are will help you offer incentives specifically for them. For example, under Visitor Loyalty, if you have high amounts of repeat customers, you can offer daily deals so that regular customers are rewarded. If you do not have a high percentage of repeat visitors, you will probably want to increase that, and you can offer incentives to encourage customers to come back. If your customers come to your website only one time, then daily deals will not be that appealing. Instead, for customers who only come once, you will want to send them emails with coupons or deals to remind them of your website and cause them to revisit. Another option would be to advertise upcoming sales, such as "this weekend only" or "labor day sale." The one warning on this is that it could cause current customers to wait to purchase, and you may end up losing the sale if they forget to return. You will want to make sure that if you advertise upcoming sales, that the sales are not too far in the future, no more than a day or two.
Under Browser Capability you will want to see what type of browser your customers are using, and what browser functions may be turned off. For example, if a large percentage of your customers are using mobile browsers (I would say that 10% or more is a large percentage for mobile browsing) you will want to make sure that your website looks good on a mobile browser, or may even be specific to mobile browsers. If your website has too many functions such as hover over menus or hover over information blocks, mobile browsers are not going to see those. You may also consider setting up CSS specific to mobile browsers or even different pages for mobile browsers. Be aware if you use flash, JavaScript or cookies in your web design that the majority of your customers are using browsers that support those.
Traffic Sources
I think that the key here is knowing how your customers find you, and appreciating your channels. If you have affiliates which refer traffic, consider offering those affiliates a revenue share to encourage more traffic from them. Another option would be for those traffic sources that bring you many hits but maybe not as many sales, try offering a coupon code on the affiliate website. This will both increase the hits from that affiliate, and will cause more of those hits to become sales. You may decide that some traffic sources are not generating sales and that it may not be beneficial to invest in that source at this time.
Website Content
In the website content reports I like the "Top Pages," "Top Landing Pages" and "Top Exit Pages." Your top pages are where you will want to focus some of your efforts and make sure that those pages have your main content easily viewable on the page. If your top pages are product category pages you'll want to make sure that best selling products are listed high or prominently on the page. If your top pages are content pages you will want to make sure the content is relevant to your website and directs customers where you want them to go or to the best information on your website. Top Landing Page reports are especially good if you are using affiliates or you have advertising that references those pages. Top Exit Pages are the pages where you will want to make the most changes or improvements. These pages are the pages where customers are leaving your website. You can study these pages to find out why customers are leaving after looking at these pages. If they are your order.cgi pages, it may be because shipping prices are too high. If your top exit pages are customer service pages it could be some of your store policies that are scaring customers away. When you make changes to these pages, make sure you note the changes in Google Analytics and see if your changes improved the page status.
Goals
Google Analytics goals are great for tracking advertisements, cart abandonment and specials on your pages where you hope that a specific banner or graphic will generate a certain result such as submitting comments or placing an order. To learn how to setup a cart abandonment goal please refer to my previous post, Cart Abandonment Funnel.
Ecommerce Tracking
If you have setup your website in Google Analytics to track ecommerce then this section will let you know such things as your top products, your website's conversion rate and average order value. This section can help you focus to boost those areas. For example, your top products should be highlighted or featured in your store. You can offer specials or get reviews/testimonials for those products. For the average order value, if orders in your store are typically at a certain amount, offer discounts to encourage just above that amount. If all orders in your store average $75-$100, try offering free shipping for orders over $100, or 5% off for orders over $100. This will encourage customers who are close to that threshold to add a small product to reach that amount.
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