If you are not using Google Analytics, chances are you are not getting optimum results from your website. Tracking the strength of your website and making adjustments to improve the consumer experience has now been made incredibly accessible and simple, even for those who cringe at the word "data."
What is Google Analytics?
Put simply, Google Analytics is a free tool that analyzes the traffic on your website and measures its strength to provide you with information about what is working on your website and what needs to be improved. If you are unable to answer these questions with specific data about your current website, you are not taking advantage of the free benefits at your fingertips:
- How many people visit my website daily, weekly, and monthly?
- Where do most of my visitors live?
- How much time are visitors spending on my page?
- What pages are my visitors viewing?
- Do visitors spend time reading my content?
- How are viewers locating my page?
- How many visitors have converted to leads?
- How many visitors have converted to customers?
Were you able to answer all of these questions definitively? If not, read more to understand how Google Analytics works for increasing traffic to your website, improving the customer experience, and converting visitors into customers.
Google Analytics Helps You Understand User Interaction with your Website:
This valuable analytics tool collects site-specific data at four primary levels: the user level, the session level, the page view level, and the events level. The data is then aggregated through metrics and broken down into small, consumable pieces of information that help you understand how successfully your website is being utilized. Think of metrics as the actual statistics, such as the number of users who visit your site or the hours spent per user. Obviously, you want to know how many people visit your site, but if you know the actual demographics of your users such as age, gender, geographic location, computer users, and even percentage of mobile device users, you will improve the understanding of your buyer persona. Imagine if 80% of your traffic generates from mobile devices, and your site is not mobile friendly. The data presents a problem you can easily solve which allows you to address the problem and improve the customer experience.
The acquisition data you can obtain from Google Analytics aids in determining how users find you on the web. This tool analyzes information about your site users before they ever even come to your page. You can discover what mediums your visitors utilize to find your website. Do they arrive through organic Google searches, paid keyword searches, links from other pages, or social media channels? This knowledge assists you in where you should enhance your presence and spend your advertising dollars to increase traffic.
The Google Analytics user behavior metrics provide you with the details you want to know about the effectiveness of your content on your website. The software can identify the average length of a visit, the first and last page a visitor used on your site, and even the order that a visitor proceeded through your pages. The bounce rate, or a rate at which visitor’s leave from your site after only viewing one page, enables you to determine if specific pages are effectively engaging. By analyzing this information, you can improve the customer experience which aids in turning visitors into leads.
All websites want traffic, but if site visits do not turn into conversions, the website is not functioning adequately for a solid return on investment. Google analytics allows you to know where visitors came from, how they got there, and where on the site they land to become conversions. If a website has a high traffic volume, but few conversions, the site likely includes weak calls-to-action, poorly placed calls to action or poor use of buttons in the webpage design. The conversion rates can be increased by strategically improving the use of conversion tools as identified by the data in the analytics reports.
Google has made it incredibly easy to get started with Google Analytics. Simply sign up, obtain a tracking code, and start learning everything you need to know about your website traffic with over fifty customizable reports at your fingertips. The experts at Neon Rain, a premier web development company, are here to develop a WordPress or Drupal site for your small business, non-profit, or eCommerce business.