Make informed marketing decisions with Google Analytics

Google likes your business. In fact, Google wants your business to do well because if you do well and get benefit from their tools so do they. Google Analytics is one of the best free tools that Google has to offer. It will help you make informed marketing decisions, something we support and assist you with at Start Digital.

Google is the hotshot of search engines. It has a whopping four billion, four hundred and sixty-four million users- DAILY. Some three and a half billion more than the next leading search engine- Bing. That means they have a lot of data and like all good businesses, they share what they know with you, in order to help your business grow. Google has many free tools that all smart business owners should be tapping into. In this article we’ll take you through some basic tools of the main one – Google Analytics. We encourage our clients to look at their data and understand who their audience is and how that can help them build targeted marketing strategies.

A Google Analytics low-down

Google analytics can feel a bit overwhelming. Start Digital know that it’s something business owners understand they need to have but are not sure what it exactly does and how it can benefit their business. There are a lot of statistics in there and it could take a bit of time to figure out the most beneficial for your business

We have picked the three key elements for those starting out with Google Analytics and they are what we consider when we develop websites with our clients. There are plenty more, we’ve only skimmed the surface, but these are pretty simple to get your head around if you’re new to website analytics, data and conversion.

Audience, Acquisition and Behaviour

Log into your Google Analytics account. There is a list of options on the left-hand side of the screen. Here you will find the options for Audience, Acquisition and Behaviour. We’re going to look at these in a bit more detail.

1. Audience
Google analytics can tell you a lot about the demographics of the people that are visiting your website. Including their gender, age and location as well as the type of web browser they use or if they are on a mobile device. The better you know your audience the better you know how to solve their problems and support their needs. Importantly you can see what the type of content, products and interests they have. Therefore, you can arrange your website to suit them. Maybe you’ll discover your audience is mainly women, you might then decide to change your theme, topics or marketing angle. It might be younger, and so you can adjust content to appeal to that particular generation.

You can look at the location and see where people live. This is useful if you are thinking of running a paid advertisement with Google or Facebook as you can narrow your target audience to an area that has people who you know already regularly visit your website. They are primed for what you have to offer.

Finally, you can look at new and returning visitors and engagement, in other words how long people remain on your site. You can also see what type of device your audience use and even the types of browser or mobile phone. This is an important element when considering the design of your website and is something Start Digital considers when we develop your website with you

2. Acquisition
This tells you where your website visitors land on your site from. At first, it might not be obvious why this is so important. For instance, if your website visitors came from a guest blog, you might try and see if you can do another one to replicate the results. Similarly, if it was social media or an email list, you’re going to see if you can repeat the process.

Click on Acquisition > Channels to see any peak in the number of visitors to your website received on any given day and how this corresponds to business activity on that day – did you release a blog or attend an expo. You can clearly see which of your marketing efforts are working.

You can hone this in even more and click on each channel for more details. For example, if you click on social you will see the exact social media platform that directed a visitor to your website. One tip Start Digital advise, is trying one marketing strategy at a time. If you try several different avenues at one time it is difficult to pin down the impact each strategy has. Sticking to one campaign at a time means you can see clearly which campaign yields the greatest results. When you find what’s working best, you can rinse and repeat.

3. Behaviour
The behaviour of your visitors and how they are interacting with your website is important. This section will inform you which pages perform best. If you click on Behaviour > Site content > Content drilldown, you will find the list of your web pages which are visited the most.
You will also find a list of landing pages, where you’d hope to see your most important or promoted pages. These are the pages that you want to push in front of your audience. If they’re not high on that list then you need to adjust the campaign or think about changing it entirely.
This is also a place where you can check your site speed. Nobody likes a slow loading site. People are too busy to hang around and usually it doesn’t take too much to fix a slow loading time.

We get it

We know that google analytics can be overwhelming. Even making the most of the basic stats will help you drive content. This will generate more traffic and leads, in turn creating customers and loyal fans. Take a small amount of time to understand your website statistics. Even what we’ve covered here will help you drive better marketing campaigns and make clearer marketing decisions for your business.

If you’re looking to extend the reach of your online profile drop us a line. We have the experience to not only create you a great looking website but also to build a strategy that promotes your site and services to more qualified leads.