Setting Goals

• Without clear goals for your website you won't be able to use Google Analytics reports effectively. Goals mean understanding the actions you want your visitors to take when they hit your site -- be that buying a product, joining your mailing list or downloading an eBook. The "goals" link on the left sidebar of your Google Analytics dashboard allows you to create up to four sets of goals. Making these goals clear and simple helps you mark your progress more easily.
  
  

Visitor Origin

• While it's easy to get an overall view of where visitors to your site arrive from, it's not always obvious how to check a specific piece of content. However, if you know that you got a lot of traffic on a particular day, you can find out where people clicked through from to hit that content. Narrow the date range to the day you saw the traffic spike, then select "Top Content" from the Content menu. This will bring up a list of the websites that sent people to your site that day, according to Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing.
  
  

Email Reports

• Even the most committed website owner forgets to check her analytics now and again. However, Google Analytics offers a function to email your reports to you so you won't forget. Clicking the "email" button at the top of any piece of data brings up an email options panel. You can include a subject line, message, file format and select how often you want to receive the information. Google Analytics then sends the file out when it's ready.
  
  

Use eCommerce Tracking

• By turning on eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics, you can assign dollar values to any conversions, actions or downloads made by your site visitors. While you may have accounting software to measure your website income, using analytics to track sales alongside other metrics such as keywords and visitor origin can help you make useful tweaks to your site. For example, you can see in almost real-time what effect adding a new piece of content or changing your site copy has on your sales.