If you know me, you'll know that I love measuring and analysing pretty much anything. That includes websites and visitor behaviours.

These days, when almost anyone can own a website, organisations need a competitive edge to set themselves apart from the pack. Often this competitive edge comes from gorgeous aesthetics and special features, but sometimes all the glamour doesn't convert into paying customers.

Every now and then you'll find a site that combines wonderful aesthetics with analytics to enhance user experiences and optimise online performance. In plain english: you might not notice all the work that has done into refining the site, but it is simple, smooth, useable, and it makes you want to buy.

A few weeks ago I passed the Google Analytics certification test, and am now Google Analytics Qualified. This means I can look at your site's statistics and help you maximise the content and design for higher customer conversions. Wise digital producers don't just invest in the design, but commit to analysing and refining every element of the site with data driven decisions over extended period of time.

This is a valuable skill to have on your team. Many companies hire consultants who do just this sort of web analytics. While some make their bread and butter this way, (and make a lot more for their clients), I believe every web designer, copywriter, and developer should have a solid grasp on how to measure, track & experiment with what converts visitors to customers.

If you're looking to hire someone for your next web project, ask them what sort of Google Analytics experience they've had. Sure they can design, but if you want to maximise your investment, make sure they have a focus on conversions!

PS. For those who have more time, here's the long list of everything I can now do.

• Install Google Analytics on custom setups that require tracking of single user sessions across domains.
• Advise on best practices for analysing data and trends.
• Identify quality traffic sources and keywords that result in the highest goal conversions.
• Interpret content reports to rank pages on relevance and effectiveness. Provide content recommendations to lower bounce rates.
• Utilise multiple profiles per account to filter traffic, track additional goals, and grant individual access to users/department stake-holders.
• Measure and evaluate the effectiveness of AdWords, email newsletters, and other online marketing campaigns.
• Track specific AdWords ads to optimise the use of relevant and valuable keywords.
• Set up goal conversion tracking in line with business KPIs.
• Trace the navigational funnel that lead to a goal, identifying pages with a high dropout.
• Integrate transaction-level e-commerce reporting to track trends in sales activity and performance.
• Rank and analyse the pages with the most impact on your site's revenue.
• Develop custom reports based on business needs.
• Implement advanced segmentation to provide a higher level of granularity in reporting.
• Create motion charts to demonstrate and visualise data trends in up to 5 dimensions.
• Utilise Google's Internal Site Search to follow search trends and identify user's needs/questions.
• Advise on tracking advanced visitor actions that don't constitute a pageview (eg. AJAX, Flash etc).
• Advise on custom visitor segmentation (eg. integration with a membership site to segment registered users by their roles/permissions).

I'm looking to build up a wider range of Google Analytics experience, so if you have a Google Analytics question, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to help.