Your metrics are the secret to any successful marketing campaign and having the appropriate metrics at your disposal enables you to establish the proper objectives, monitor your progress in real time, and eventually increase your business’s revenue.
This typically leads back to your website, and Google Analytics just so happens to be one of the most widely used tools for gathering website metrics.
Although Google Analytics is well-known in the marketing industry, many business owners are still unsure about what it is, how it can help their businesses, and—most importantly—does google analytics costs money.
Read on to get a full picture of your options and to help clear up any ambiguity regarding the price of this platform and whether it’s worthwhile at the price point.
How Does Google Analytics Work?
If you work in marketing, you’ve heard about Google Analytics a lot during your career.
Google Analytics is a tool that tracks, records, and deconstructs the important metrics for your website and is owned by Google. With the help of this tool, you can find out a variety of information about your website’s visitors, including how many people visit it each day, where they come from, how they interact with it when they are there, and much more.
How to Login to Google Analytics Account
Access Analytics by clicking the Sign in to Analytics button in the top right. If you are signed into Google (for instance, your Gmail account), the Analytics user interface will immediately appear on the screen.
Is Google Analytics Free, Then?
It is, but it also features a paid option.
Google Analytics is a “freemium” service, which means that small and medium-sized businesses can use it without paying a monthly price, but there is a recurrent fee if you want more advanced features or the capacity to do more with the service.
So, What is Google Analytics 360?
Google Analytics is available in two different versions. The premium version of Google Analytics 360 (GA360) is a paid version of Google Analytics with tier-based pricing, while the basic version of Google Analytics (GA) is free.
The quantity of “Hits” is the key distinction between regular Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360. This Hit-limit can be reached if you have a large user base. Also, data consistency issues may arise when this occurs.
And in certain cases, Google can still remove some important event data because you hit the cap. Even so, Google will sample the data whenever the queries grow too complex and large simultaneously.
This is why using Google Analytics 360 is costly since you can prevent data sampling.
Main Takeaways From the Google Analytics Sibling Versions
At the end of the day, the key distinction between regular Google Analytics and premium Google Analytics 360 is the “Hits” number. This Hit-limit can be reached if you have a large user base. Also, data consistency issues may arise when this occurs.
And in certain cases, Google can still remove some important event data because you hit the cap. Even so, Google will sample the data whenever the queries grow too complex and large simultaneously.
This is why using Google Analytics 360 is costly since you can prevent data sampling.
Which Is The Best For You, Then?
Although Google 360 has several great capabilities, they might not be useful to all marketers or produce the ROI required to justify the high price.
When evaluating Google Analytics Standard or Google Analytics 360 for your company, there are several things to take into account.
The basic version can be ideal for you if you don’t believe your website receives enough visitors to go over its limit. Google Analytics 360 could be able to help you collect the data you require if you work for a larger company with a lot of segmented, targeted clients.
So overall, it truly depends on what features are most significant to you (and what you’re ready to spend for them).
You can try Google Analytics Standard first if you’re having trouble making up your mind, and then upgrade if you think you’ll benefit from the added capacity and capabilities.
Want to learn more about marketing analytics tools? Read our blog by clicking on the thumbnail below.
