Further to our last article about measuring your impact, Google Analytics is an essential tool. Their system can be pretty complicated when you dig into it but the basic statistics are easy enough to access. When it’s linked up to Google Search Console you can see trends in website traffic, how this traffic relates to your marketing efforts and monitor how people are finding and using your site. You can then do more of what works!

The right traffic?

If you have lots of traffic to a particular page, you could be getting a link from a popular site (for better or worse). Google Analytics enables you to spot these trends and modify your marketing and keyword strategies accordingly. You may also be getting a lot of traffic for a related but wrong keyword, which is one element that can lead to a high ‘bounce rate’. This is where people arrive, realise it’s not what they are looking for and leave straight away.

Tracking signups, sales or enquiries

You can also track conversions using Google Analytics, which could be a customer signing up to your email list, buying something or making an enquiry through a contact form. This lets you know whether people are taking action after visiting your site. Tracking conversions might mean some technical help to add the goals to your Google Analytics profile but it well worth setting up.

Measuring the right things

You need to know the right numbers and the number of ‘hits’ to your site is not as relevant as the number of unique visitors. Number of actual page views is more helpful, but still doesn’t necessarily mean more sales or enquiries!

Targeted visitors that convert are what matters and using Google Analytics to understand your traffic can help you attract the right visitors. 1000 people a day that leave straight away is worse than three visitors a week that contact you to become a client.

Summary

Google Analytics is a great free way of seeing who is visiting your site, how long they stay and what they do. If you look at the right statistics Google Analytics can help you make your online marketing more effective.

If you need a hand with setting up Google Analytics drop us a line on 01636 812 551 and we’ll be glad to help!