Find Insurance Online

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Analytics
In today’s world, it is increasingly important for organizations to have a presence on the web. But once your organization has invested time and resources in a website, how do you measure the impact of this investment? Where is your traffic coming from and what is it doing when it gets to your site? Which pages on your site are the most engaging and which pages have the most user dropouts? All of these questions can be answered with Google Analytics, Google’s enterprise-class web analytics service, which is now available for free with your Google Apps account!

Google Analytics provides data about your web properties, including traffic volume, number of visitors, and time spent on your site, in a straightforward and easy to understand way.


Google Analytics also makes it easy to track where your traffic comes from, both in terms of referring sources as well as geographic location.


Google Analytics is designed to be easy to use for everyone in your organization, from the product manager to the chief of marketing. Even though it’s simple to use, Google Analytics offers advanced features such as custom reports, segmentation, e-commerce capabilities, API access, and onsite search for power users that want to construct a more tailored experience. Google Analytics delivers easily-digestible insights that can be used across your organization to increase website traffic and engagement, and to improve the return on your web investment.

Just like other Google Apps services, Google Analytics runs in Google’s cloud so it delivers all of the world-class reliability and scalability that you have come to expect from Google Apps. Also, sharing Analytics data and delegating access to colleagues in your organization is simple using their existing Google Apps accounts. And, because the documents, spreadsheets and sites that you create using Google Apps live in the cloud and have unique web addresses, you can use Google Analytics to track traffic to your domain’s docs in addition to your website.

Learn more and get started
Google Analytics can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about how Google Analytics can help you track engagement with your website take a look at our product tour or read some customer stories to learn how Google Analytics has had an impact on an organization like yours. Or, check out the Google Analytics blog for the latest news and tips and tricks.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Analytics at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics team

Note: Google Analytics may not be available in all areas.

Chris O’Neill, Managing Director for Google Canada, recently spoke at the 10th annual Small Business Forum organized by Enterprise Toronto. In his address, he highlighted a few essential steps all small businesses and entrepreneurs should be pursuing to grow their business and reach new customers.

So before you get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, take the opportunity to make sure you’re using every online tool available to you that can help you make the most of this shopping season. There’s no time like the present to engage in these five things:

• Establish an Online Presence: 20 percent of searches on Google are related to location, so it’s important for local businesses to have a presences on the web. A website does not need to be complex to serve its purpose. Creating a user-friendly, well-structured website will also help search engines like Google find and index it easily. Google Webmaster Tools provides a free and easy way to make your website more Google-friendly.

• Use Free Marketing to Reach Customers: People search Google.com and Google Maps to find local business, so make sure your customers know where you are and what you’re all about by claiming your free Google Places business listing. In addition to sharing your location, phone number and business hours, use Google Places to engage with customers by providing photos, video, coupons, public responses and more. You can also take advantage of free marketing opportunities by posting content to social networking sites, such as YouTube.

• Know Your Customers: To understand why some visitors aren’t converting, get website analytics data and learn what potential customers are doing on your site. Google Analytics is one of these analytics products, and it’s a free and powerful tool that can help you answer questions about the effectiveness of your content, how engaged your users are with your site, where they abandon your shopping cart and much more. With the right data in your hands, you can make smarter website design decisions and also make sure that the money you spend on advertising is actually delivering the results you want.

• Advertise Online: Online advertising is targeted, measurable and flexible. Products such as Google AdWords allow business owners like you to connect with your target audience at the exact moment they search for your products or services online. With AdWords, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad is taken directly to your website. You also get actionable analysis and performance information, so you know how to refine your ad copy or the keywords that trigger your ad to appear on the search results page. Plus, any business can be up and running in 15 minutes.
• To find out about all our advertising tools and products, visit our Google for Advertisers site for Canadian businesses.

• Embrace the Cloud: Web-based applications, such as Google Apps, are helping to streamline productivity and ensure that your business is running efficiently. Your employees can collaborate on documents in real-time and access them from anywhere, whether they’re on the road or at the office. This suite of online products also helps businesses spend less time and money managing email and other IT services, giving them the ability to focus more on what they do best: creating quality products and services, and sharing them with customers. Best of all, you can get started with Google Apps for free!

Posted by Andrew Swartz, Small Business Blog team

Google and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently announced an exciting new partnership aimed at providing resources and tools that can help small businesses learn how to succeed online. “Tools for Online Success” is a website featuring videos and tutorials from small business owners who have used the Internet to grow their businesses, and advice from Google’s experts.



You can visit www.google.com/help/sba for the full rundown and tutorials, but here are a few easy tips that all small business owners should be employing:

Establish an online presence: As more and more people get online to find information and local searches grow, an online presence is increasingly important for a small business. Whether it’s creating a website or starting a Twitter feed, there are many steps that you can take to enhance your visibility online. For example, Google Places allows you to claim your listing and input specific information about your business. This means that when people look on the Internet to learn more about your business, you are able to build and control the profile they’ll view.

Utilize free marketing tools to reach your consumer base: Services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube allow you to communicate with customers and grow your fan base. These tools are great “word-of-mouth” platforms where your customers can tell their friends about your products. Keep customers in-the-loop about new promotions or specials, or exciting events.

Know your customers: Easy-to-use web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, can help you better understand how your content is being received by customers. You can analyze what search term brought visitors to your webpage and what content they look at while they are there. This information will help you make more intelligent decisions about what products to feature and what terms your might want to run on to trigger your search engine advertisements.

Stay aware of the latest trends: The recent growing popularity of smart phones has meant that more and more customers search for information on the go. This makes it crucial for your business information to be up-to-date and online. To cater to consumers with smart phones, you can provide driving directions, post digital coupons or link to your menu.

Posted by Posted by John Hanke, Vice President of Product Management