As a small business owner, you may believe you have checked all the boxes regarding your internet marketing efforts. After all, you already have a lovely website using your brand colors; you are sending regular, engaging emails to your customers; and you are posting quippy content and using hashtags on social media platforms. So how do you know if your efforts are achieving results? Google has an app just for that! Here are four reasons you should be using Google Analytics to measure your website’s effectiveness and your marketing efforts:
- Google Analytics is FREE! That’s right, free. You will need to sign up for it using your Google ID to get a Google Analytics Tracking Code. Once you have that, work with your webmaster to install the tracking code in your website.
- Google Analytics tells you, in real time, how many active users are on your website as well as how many visitors you’ve had each day, since you installed the tracking code. You can review a “Real Time Report” and discover which pages are being visited and information about your users, like what location they are browsing from whether they’re browsing via a desktop computer or mobile device.
- Acquisition data is captured in Google Analytics, unlocking the ability to identify what is bringing users (hopefully, customers) to your website. This is an important piece of detailed information as you discern the effectiveness of your blogs and emails and make decisions about future marketing efforts. Did most of your traffic arrive by clicking a link in your email or visiting a social post? Find out which of your efforts are paying off then make sure your web content is relevant and keeping them on your site.
- Gain the ability to see what pages of your website keep users engaged and which ones do not. By reviewing Google Analytics Pages information, you will better understand the behavior of your website users. Are they spending several minutes on one page? Examine the content of that page and discover what is keeping them there. Are they quickly bouncing from certain pages? Perhaps there is a broken link or missing content or perhaps the body copy on the page fails to deliver on the promise of the headline. Maybe the articles need work to help keep the user’s attention.
It’s easy to understand your business’s supporting data in Google Analytics. You may find yourself starting out by looking at one metric and discover that by simply clicking on the data to get more detailed information – you can drill down to the answer you seek.
Google Analytics reports are a window to an incredible amount of data. Analytics’ invaluable information is presented in easy to understand graphs and reports. Figure out what metrics are important to measure your marketing efforts and use Google Analytics to efficiently monitor your progress and enjoy the peace of mind of knowing that your decisions are backed by science; productively driving your marketing.
This post is courtesy of Accounting and Office Manager Beth Lane and Michael Mackenzie Communications, Atlanta’s Small Business Marketing Specialists.