Hands up if you’ve got Google Analytics set up to measure your website?
If you’re sitting there saying “well, I’ve really been meaning too” put it at the top of your things to do…now!
Google Analytics is an absolute must.
For starters – it’s free!
And the statistics it can provide you with about your sales funnel are priceless.
Now, if you do have it set up…do you know if it’s working? Do you ever look at it?
Whether you don’t have it, or don’t use it, I wanted to remind you why it’s so beneficial for your business and what valuable insights you can gain from it.
What Google Analytics can tell you
Where is your traffic coming from?
You can see whether visitors are typing your URL in directly or coming to you via Google (organic search or Adwords), Facebook, Twitter, MailChimp or a whole host of other referral sources.
This is important for your budget because you can then put more money into the marketing channels that are bringing you traffic and less into the ones that aren’t. Or you can decide to figure out why you’re getting less traffic from other places and work on improving your optimization.
Why are people coming to your site?
Google Analytics can show you which keywords people are typing in to get to your site – and it must surprise you. Using this information you can see if your site is relevant to these visitors, optimize it if it is, and again, you have another clue as to how to focus your marketing efforts.
How many visitors are coming to your site?
Do you have certain days, weeks or months that are more popular than others?
Can you spot a spike to coincide with a recent campaign, blog post, social media post or other marketing effort?
Are numbers growing or diminishing?
What are people doing on your site?
Whether it’s the pages they’re looking at, or the parts of the page that they’re clicking on, this can help you tweak the content and the design, and again helps you to focus your marketing spend.
You can also discover how well your website is converting prospects into customers which can help you tighten up your sales process and improve your ROI.
How long are people staying on my site?
You can quickly see how long people are staying on your site, which tells you if they’re having a good look around or they leave as quickly as they come.
Are they using a computer or a mobile device?
Do you know how many people are using a mobile device to view your site? And if the number is high – is your website mobile-friendly?
And much, much more!
Getting the most out of Google Analytics
There is definitely a myriad of data available, and it can look like it’s all too hard.
The important thing to remember – first work out what you want to know, then you can set up reports to tell you that on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
What’s more, you can also set Goals, which can tell you how many people are taking the actions you want them to – be it registrations, forms, downloads or purchases.
Until next time…..
