A lot of etsy sellers feel intimidated by Google Analytics, considering it too techy. While there is no other alternative for keeping track of the traffic of your etsy store, you can use Blogger Stats to be updated on the visits to your Blogger blog.
Stats for Blogger have been around for almost a year now and apart from the simple, easy to understand user interface, the 2 most sensible reasons why you should use it are:
1. You don't need to do anything to enable it.
2. You get real-time information of your blog traffic.
Since Stats are part of Blogger, you don't need to do anything to get access - no signing up for another service, no embedding codes, no adding gadgets. You can find the Stats Tab right on your blog's dashboard.
You can see who is viewing your blog right at the moment and what they are viewing!
What is more, you can get much more information, like the country your visitors come from, what keywords lead them to your blog how they ended up on your blog, and which of your posts are the most popular. You can even get to information about the operation system or browser your readers are using.
For example, if anyone shares a link to your blog on their blog/Facebook page/Tweeter, you can see almost instantly the clicks you are getting from them, with the particular link mentioning your post as the traffic source.
Of course, you can keep track of traffic data not only for the present moment but also for the day/week/month or all time.
A very important feature for the achievement of accuracy is the exclusion of your own pageviews. While this is considerably hard to do in Google Analytics, in Blogger Stats you only need to click!
In the Overview tab of Stats, click on the Don’t track your own pageviews link and select Don’t track my pageviews.
I have read in the etsy forums that people who use Google Analytics for their blog find differences in information. This is because of the different collection mechanisms and actually I haven't seen quite so much of a difference.
How are you following your blog's traffic? Do you have any tips to add?
Very interesting. I have not used this feature. Off to check it out....
ReplyDeleteI love looking at my stats... and it is so interesting to me how far away some of my readers live! Orangies Attic
ReplyDeleteDuh, I can't believe I've never even checked the Stats tab on Blogger! I use GA for Etsy and ArtFire so you think I would've thought to check the stats! Thanks for the info :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. It's my understanding though that blogger tracks only page views, not unique visitors. So if you need to track unique visitors you'd need another tracking tool.
ReplyDeleteYes, Rebecca, you are quite right. In such cases one should rely on Google analytics,
ReplyDeleteI found that out quite recently. It's quite fascinating actualy.....
ReplyDeleteWhat I can't figure out is how to add that trio of 'you might also like' boxes after each post.
Any tips?
Yes! Just click on the LinkWithin text right under the box! It will lead you to the Link Within website where you can configure the widget for your own blog. Or follow this link: http://www.linkwithin.com/learn?ref=widget
ReplyDeleteI have to say I love Google Analytics! I check in everyday to see how my shops are doing, not so much for the blogging, but I should make that a habit too! In fact, I think I'll take a peek now... ;)
ReplyDeleteI do use both. I use the Analytics for all my shops but when I want to check my blog, I use the blogger stats. It's just so convenient.
ReplyDeleteI have never looked at this, thanks so much for the heads up!!! Until now I've only used google analytics and it's been very interesting... I spot a lot of international followers that way.
ReplyDeleteGreat thanks - I never even noticed this!
ReplyDeleteI'd never noticed this before - thank you for sharing it, and with such clear instructions!
ReplyDelete