If you’re not familiar with Google Analytics or if it’s found its way to your bottom drawer it can be daunting – there’s a lot of data to dig through and things have changed a little recently.
The most exciting change (and a great place to start) is the new Analytics Intelligence tool – pictured above. You can ask it any question you may have about your website and it will pull the most relevant report for you in seconds. Try something like: How may users did we get last week on mobile?
There are three key categories within Google Analytics that can provide you with endless information about your potential customers and indicate the strength of your marketing strategies – Audience, Behaviour and Acquisition.
Audience – Learn more about who is visiting your website including demographics and interests. Understanding who is on your site assists you to tailor your message.
Behaviour – Shows you what pages your visitors are looking at, for how long and what’s causing them to leave. Also check out the technology section to determine what visitors are using to view your site. If you have a high volume of smartphone users and don’t have a responsive website, traffic will decrease dramatically.
Acquisition – Indicates the strength of marketing strategies as it provides detailed information about how people arrive to your site. Here’s what to look for:
Strong direct traffic is when a user typed your URL directly into a browser. It is an indicator of the strength of your brand.
High organic traffic is an indicator of the value of your SEO strategy.
Strong paid search represents a successful adwords (or the equivalent) campaign.
A lot of referral traffic means your website is being talked about (and linked to) from other websites.
High social traffic indicates you have a strong social media strategy. It will assist you to determine the best channel to use also.
Your email traffic will indicate how effective your email marketing campaign is.
To help you stay on top of your analytics try setting up a weekly report sent to your inbox. This will make sure it remains out of that bottom draw and top of mind where it belongs.
Allison