Posted on April 26, 2022 in Marketing Thoughts

5 Ways Google Analytics Can Help Your Online Business

Google is pretty amazing. There are many tools that it offers at no cost that can substantially help your online business. As a continuation of last week’s blog on various Internet marketing practices to help people get to your website, let’s look at how you can use Google to determine what they do when they get there.

Let us start with the basics.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic in both real-time and historic data. Running a special? See how many people respond to it. Investing in a new advertising method- Google can tell you how such actions you take are reflected on the website. Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. Google Analytics allows you to see things such as how many people visit your website, where (geographically) they are coming from, how long they stay on the site, what kind of device or browser are they using and so much more. Almost any data you want to find out about your online visitors can be found in Google Analytics. Let’s explore 5 specific data points Analytics can provide and what that means to your business.

1. What products/services or other pages are your customers interested in? Every single product or page is tracked when Google Analytics is installed properly. Google Analytics tells not only how many people visit your website, but to the exact page and for how long. Just as important as what the people love, is what they don’t. You can run reports that show you the Top Exit Pages of your website,- the exact place your customers leave the website. Based on that report, you can decide whether those ill-trafficked parts of your website should be scrapped or just retooled.
2. Measurement of Conversions A conversion is any action you deem one on your website. This could include a purchase, a web lead filled out, an appointment made, etc. You can tie a value to a conversion determined by you using specific data or “fuzzy math”. Specific data is a direct correlation, for example- Someone buys your product XYZ. This purchase has a value to you of 20 dollars. You can label each type of conversion or go with the default Conversion Goal Number 1. ( I recommend labeling them). You have 5 conversions and the total value is 100 dollars. Fuzzy math would be something like this: it takes about 10 lead forms sent to generate one sale. One sale equals 100 dollars. You could set a lead form to 10 dollars if you don’t have an exact amount.
3. Time of Day This is one of the most important things you can discover. When do people visit your site the most? Is it at night after they are done working, during the lunch break, or on the weekend? Google Analytics allows you to find exact data for this. You can adjust your marketing if need be to address the peak times and surges. (BirdSeed offers a great way to interact with your customers, regardless of the time or day they come to your site.)
4. Is Social Media Helping Your Business? Social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and others can take a large part of the time. If using these items is a part of your plan then they should drive people to your website or drive conversions on the respective channels. You can see how many people are visiting your website through these channels and their behavior on the website to determine actions if they buy more than from other mediums and if social media is worth your time.
5. Learn about Your Content and Keywords that are working well You can use Analytics to discover the keywords and phrases people are using to reach your website. Are these the right words? What patterns can be seen that allow you to make important SEO and marketing decisions? How can keywords be added to content to describe a product or service from a blog or video?

While Google Analytics allows a snapshot of any singular activity, it is a best practice to look at many different elements of your website to paint a much more in-depth picture. Given that, Google Analytics can get very deep and can be intimidating. Here is a way I suggest for working around that. Come up with a few specific questions you want to be answered. Some examples are: how many visitors came to my site? What page did they stay on the most? Where did they spend the least amount of time? What city are they coming from? … and the list goes on. Once you have a question, Google it and add “in Google Analytics.” so taking our previous example, now it becomes a Google search: “How can I tell how many people came to my site in Google analytics?” And very often the top search result will provide your answer.

BirdSeed offers ways for you to interact with your online customer. The reason that we write blogs like this is to help you with the entire customer journey. To learn more about what BirdSeed can do for you, contact us today to set up a quick demo or ask us any questions.