Sick of trying to make sense of Google Analytics? Then look no further. The following Google Analytics tricks are not only dead easy, they take little effort and give vital insights so you can always be on the ball and make more money from your web site.

1. Alerts sent direct to your inbox. Imagine you could have a trusted adviser who would whisper in your ear the moment something goes wrong with your site before anyone else finds out? Well you can. By setting up Intelligence Alerts you can have warnings sent immediately to your inbox if something bad happens—it could be sales grinding to a halt or Google deciding to stop sending traffic, it doesn’t matter—the point is you’ll have time to respond before it turns into a disaster.

If you haven’t already, set up Intelligence Alerts right now by clicking on the home tab in Google Analytics, then navigating to the Intelligence Events overview in the left sidebar. Now click on Custom Alerts in the main screen and click on Manage Custom Alerts. The rest is self explanatory—really, it’s dead simple—and now you can sleep at night knowing you’ll be the first to know if something happens.

2. See what time of day customers buy from you. If you’ve ever worked in retail you’ll have noticed times of day when you get more sales. The same applies with ecommerce. And you can find these times by setting up a custom report in Analytics.

Why would you want to know this? So you can time your social media promotions or paid advertising campaigns to attract more sales and spend less money on advertising when people don’t buy.

How to do it? First click on Custom Reporting in the top right tab of Google Analytics. Make sure you are in the Overview page (link is on the left sidebar). Now click on New Custom Report. Click on Add Metric and add Revenue. Now click on Add Dimension and add Hour. Click Save and you’re ready to rock and roll. Now you can see what hours you make the most sales.

3. Track mobile visits on any report. This feature is perfect if you know how important mobile visitors have become and want to understand how they interact with your web site. With just a few clicks you can see how mobile visitors behave in any report. For example, if you are looking at organic traffic simply click on the Advanced Segments in the top of the screen and then click on Mobile Visitors in the Default Segments scrollbox and voilà your report now only shows information for mobile visitors.

4. See what search engine rankings your web site has inside Google Analytics. This is one of my favourites—by linking your Google Analytics account with Webmaster Tools you can see what keywords your web site ranks for right inside Google Analytics! If you haven’t done so already, ask your webmaster to link your Google Analytics account with your Google Webmaster tools account and you will be able to see your search rankings in the Organic report in the Traffic Sources section of Google Analytics.

5. Multi-channel Funnels. It comes as no surprise many online retailers are discovering customers don’t always buy on their first visit. They often visit a site several times before buying. For example, a user might:

1. Search for something through Google and arrive at your site
2. Leave your web site and do something else
3. Later search for your brand and click on a paid advertisement
4. Buy something from your web site

The new Multi-channel Funnels feature allows you to track this behaviour. This feature kicks butt! To view Multi-channel Funnels click on the Conversions tab on the main sidebar. Now click on Multi-channel Funnels then Top Conversion Paths.

That about wraps it up. Do you have any Google Analytics tricks you just can’t live without?

By ecommercemarketer