Google Analytics

Avantages

1. Can track anything and everything that happens on your website and apps. It's so powerful.
2. It's free (for the basic version).
3. Powerful data analytics capability to help decision making.
4. Can handle massive volumes of data in a simple & easy way.
5. The paid version of Google Analytics - that is Google Analytics 360 is more powerful - so if you need more its available on tap but is expensive.

Inconvénients

1. Heat maps are not available fully - on the console itself - although a rudimentary option is available to view it on the website page itself. Needs improvement.
2. It's like a balloon - you can get more if you take the effort to learn and the learning curve is also very steep.
3. Reports and data visualisation are taken away and created on another platform called Google Data Studio, the functionality should have been added to Google Analytics itself.
4. It's tricky to setup tracking for deeper elements and also the key functionality of setting up is broken away into another tool called Google Tag Manager - again the functionality should have been on Google Analytics itself.
5. Organic data points like search terms are left out of Google Analytics and another tool called Google Search Console needs to be used to get relevant data.

Avantages

I think Google Analytics is one of the most useful tools that Google has provided us with reporting. Thanks to Google Analytics, we are able to recognize and act on our web site. Google Analytics provides us with our visits of our potential customers and more detailed information about how we can reach our new customers. You can gather below information:

How often is your website visited?
Where is the location of your users?
Which pages are receiving more clicks?
On what page do users spend more time?
What is the average time a user spends on your website?
What are the actions that user takes on your website?
Is the user entering your website by using a mobile phone or a desktop computer?

Time is very important for your website's potential visitors. It indicates whether the visitor has arrived by mistake or to inspect your website. It also shows how much time they spent on your page or product in detailed reports. This shows how much visitors are interested in which products you have. So, by moving the most visited product to the forefront, you can provide more indexing of Google Search engines and reach new potential customers. You can get information about which product results in higher rates by adding keywords to the product details.

Inconvénients

It takes time to get used to the integration. Documentation is good but still, it should get better.

Avantages

The sheer number of ways you can look at data. Most often I've found myself needing to check traffic from a particular channel - whether it has been organic when analyzing SEO results, or paid when trying to verify PPC campaign reporting, get an overview of all paid channels, or dig deeper and actually segment data from PPC campaigns to gain additional insight.
Google Analytics provides you with everything needed to analyze where your traffic is coming from and what it is doing on your website. You can typically answer all of the following questions by using Google Analytics - are there any particular pages that cause my visitors to leave more often than others, which are the pages that are driving most of my desired actions (conversions or goals), why is my site getting +50% more traffic like reported by my digital agency, but we're not getting anywhere near the increase in bottom line results.
Behavioral flow is something in particular which is worth noting as a major pro. I haven't seen other platforms that offer this functionality and although it is quite hard to get your head around at first, one you do there is no limit to the amount of insights one can generate to assist with conversion rate optimisation or just improve flow through the website as needed.

Inconvénients

There is a bit of a learning curve involved, but that is not a con of the product. Google even have an Academy where you can learn about Google Analytics and even get certified.

Avantages

We use this software on a daily basis to review data and help us make decisions about where to focus our marketing efforts, especially with social. It allows us to gather information on demographics, which is great for ad targeting, especially when you also use the Google Pixel which provides conversion data. It allows us to gather KPIs for various campaigns as well as track the success of our influencers campaigns in combination with Google Tracking URLs. We have also found that the Google Data Studio, which draws from Analytics, is one of the most effective ways to create shareable reports that can be manipulated quickly and easily for specific groups of pages, which is great for us as we have multiple segments with different target audiences. While it can take a while to learn how to navigate Google Analytics, there are great resources online to help you. You can track user behavior which is great in determining where improvements need to be made in your buyers journey.

Inconvénients

It can take time to learn how to manipulate Google Analytics so that it provides you with the information you need but once you figure it out it is a great tool. It would be great if definitions were built in. There are many terms I was unfamiliar with and I had to do online searches to get clarification.

Avantages

Google Adwords is by far the most useful online advertising platform I have come across yet, but not for the obvious reasons. Google Adwords has various features that can serve as beneficial to any small business to large enterprise needs. My preferred tool is the keyword planner, which provides you with insight into the most popular search terms with an average monthly search volume and competition for each. Since Google has certainly monopolized today’s search engines I would strongly recommend using it as your first resource when searching for key terms to include in your campaigns, website, and SEO purposes.

For more insight into the search terms that you are already ranking for and is bringing organic traffic back to your website you can look into Google Analytics and cross reference those phrases with Google Adwords to see if there are alternatives or better opportunities for you to rank in this niche. Ultimately, you are looking for key terms that have a low competition with a high monthly search volume. The secret… you want low competition and high search volume. The keyword planner also lets you set up ad groups based on phrases that pertain to specific ad or topic and provides a bid estimate to give you an idea of how much it would take to run that campaign.

Inconvénients

When setting up a Google Adwords account it is easy to get stuck in the billing cycle. If you don’t wish to have a card on file or would just like to use the keyword planner to get ideas or improve on SEO you can opt out of the payment process when you first create your account.

Because we are a fairly small company we have not seen much monetary payoff for our campaign initiatives, which was limited due to a smaller marketing budget. If you want to see results you are going to have to spend the money or the ad may not reach the intended audience or large enough quantities for it to make an impact. For smaller companies, I suggest spending your time increasing your SEO, using the keyword planner - as you can gain a bunch of organic traffic to your website if done correctly and it’s free.

Tips: One way to ensure the key terms or phrases you intend your content to show for is to complete a search for that term in Google and analyze its results. You can also you MOZ’s plugin to compare the page authority and domain authority of the other websites shown in the search results to get a better idea if your word or newly selected word would outperform some of the current results of the first page shown on Google.