Google Analytics Will Make You A Smarter Business Owner
Whether you’re already using Google Analytics or seeing the term for the first time, we think it’s time for you to take a look at how it can make you a smarter business owner. We put together this quick presentation covering the highlights with the hope of inspiring you to put this FREE tool to better use in your own business.
Your website is one of the critical points of interaction between your business and your customers. For a lot of organizations, it’s one of the critical determinants of success. But it can be hard to know how well your website is doing or who’s using it.
After all, what do you really know about your website visitors?
- Who are they?
- How are they getting to your site?
- Once they get there, what are they doing?
- And when are they doing it?
Google Analytics has these answers. By giving you greater insight into who’s using your website, how they’re getting there, and what they’re doing, Google Analytics can help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategy and web design.
Audience Reports will give you information about who is visiting your site and how long they stay. That includes demographic behavior like what country, state, or city they’re from, and what language they speak. It also includes behavior information like whether they’re a first time visitor, a frequent user, or someone who visits using a mobile device.
With this information, your business can ensure that you’re spending your marketing budgets in the right place and make decisions that grow your business.
For example, a pizza chain can tell whether or not they’re launching the right local ads by looking at whether the number of visitors has gone up since they started the campaign. And if they know that a high percentage of visitors are from a nearby town, they might hire an additional delivery person to cater to that area.
Or, to take another example, a retail website can determine whether they need a mobile website by looking at how many people try to use their site from a mobile phone.
But you don’t just want to know who is visiting. You also want to know how they’re finding you. Traffic sources lets you determine which search engines, blogs, or social networks are driving most of your traffic. Do you get a lot of traffic from Google? Bing? Or Yahoo? Google Analytics can tell you.
You’ll be able to determine whether you have a presence on important search engines and social networks. And you can make sure you’re focusing your hard-earned money on the right marketing channels.
For example, if a business discovers that Google AdWords is driving 85% of their website traffic, they know it’s critical element of their online business and shift more of their dollars to that search engine. Or, maybe a restaurant discovers that a certain blogger has been recommending their food and driving their food traffic. They could shift marketing dollars to see if they can advertise on that web page. When you know which sources drive traffic to your website, you can spend smarter.
But once they get there, how do you know what they’re doing? How are they engaging with your website? What valuable actions are they taking? Content Reports can help you understand the engagement level of your visitors, and whether your website is doing what it’s supposed to do.
- How many people look at the different pages (page views)?
- How much time do they spend there (time on site)?
- And how many of them leave the site without browsing any additional pages (bounce rate)?
When you know what’s working, you’ll know which pages to use for featuring content that makes people take action. For example, if a business discovers that one page is more popular than others, you can use that page to feature new content, offer special deals, or drive visitors towards purchases on your site.
Or take a business with a different problem? Maybe they discover that their home page isn’t driving people towards purchases. Now they know that they need to fix it, maybe re-design the page, and make sure that people are getting to the right information.
Google Analytics can also tell you when these events are taking place. Are you spending your marketing budget at the right time of year? By identifying important seasonality patterns, you will be better able to market your business smarter at the right time. For example, if a flower shop discovered that most visits happened in the spring, they could additional stock and more staff to handle the requests.
You can also set goals to help you understand whether your website is doing what you want it to do.
This includes several different types of goals that can meet the needs of all kinds of websites.
- URL destination – e.g. thank you page that signals a sale or a quote request
- Visit duration – how long did they stay?
- Pages per visit – how many pages did they look at?
This can help you understand your conversion rates and assess whether your website is helping you meet them.
All of that insight is possible with Google Analytics – and it’s not only possible, it’s actually easy to do, especially with the help of your agency. This information is available online in easy-to-read charts and reports. You can use it, share it with colleagues, and make better decisions with a few simple clicks. And for most businesses, it doesn’t even cost anything.
These are just a few examples of the difference Google Analytics has already made. As a small business, we know you face hundreds of challenges online and offline. That’s why you should focus on what you can control, and put your website to its best possible use.
Google Analytics can help you do just that.