Google Analytics: Is Your Website Accomplishing Your Company’s Goals?

Google Analytics is the most widely used platform for generating detailed statistics and reports about website visitors. Implementing Google Analytics on your website grants you a variety of benefits. We utilize its reports and data to gain valuable insight about our clients’ businesses and customers, as well as to outline and execute strategic plans. Keep reading to learn why your website not only needs Google Analytics, but also why you need professionals who know what to do with it.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics provides an abundance of services that help business owners, marketers, content writers, advertisers and web masters understand what’s going on with their website. While knowing and accessing the basics of Google Analytics will help you get acquainted with your site, there are many more in-depth features that allow you to form a relationship with it. That’s where we come in. When you enlist the expertise of people who know Google Analytics, you receive this basic information, in addition to in-depth reports:

Page views — Whenever someone visits a page on your website or blog, the view is tracked. One visitor who clicks around to four different pages on your website counts as four page views. A website with highly viewed pages has more opportunities to convert visitors into sales. By clicking around, your customers are showing interest in learning more. From this point, we know how, when and where we can get them to take action and buy your product or service.

Unique visitors — A unique visitor is someone new visiting your website. This person is counted once, no matter how many pages they view. Unique visitors represent the size of the audience you’re reaching, which is helpful for us to know when we need to make important decisions about marketing efforts.

Demographics — Google Analytics informs us where your visitors live, right down to the city. This is helpful for us to narrow down your customer profile and find out where your product or service is most popular.

Visit duration — This lets us know how long, on average, visitors spend viewing your site and which pages they stay on the longest. It’ll also tell us the bounce rate of your site, meaning the percentage of visitors who navigate away from it after viewing only one page. This information helps us design landing pages and web pages that perform more effectively. That way, your visitors get what they need quickly and efficiently.

Pages per visit — The average number of pages users view while on your website helps us understand if your navigation and internal linking efforts are working.

Referral sources — Referral sources give us information that indicates how visitors got to your site, whether by entering your URL directly, through a search engine or from a third-party website that links back to yours. This gives us a clear indication of the keywords and sources people use to get to your website. We can then use that data in our SEO efforts, whether organically or through pay-per-click campaigns.

How to Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics produces results that speak volumes about your website. But reading them is only half of it; you need to analyze and interpret them to help in measuring the performance of your website. Google Analytics gives us the tools we need to help you make decisions about your business: decisions about customer segments, website traffic, customer visit patterns, geography, a/b testing, purchases and so much more. When we review results for our clients, we use each new set of data to make recommendations and take action to make their website work better.

Here are some things we can determine, analyze, adjust and enhance when we use Google Analytics for your website:

Learn where visitors come from
Find out keywords visitors searched for to get there
Understand what visitors do once they get to your website
Track how many visitors complete your predetermined goals
See which pages retain visitors
See which pages don’t retain visitors (where they exit your site)
Determine appropriate customer segments
Focus on certain geographical areas
Discover keywords and content that should be included more
Decide which digital advertisements and creative efforts are working (and those that aren’t)
Improve landing pages
Make informative decisions with hard data to back them up

Google Analytics is the eyes and ears of your website because it helps us answer questions about your business. When equipped with these priceless pieces of information, we can take the guesswork out of whether your website is accomplishing what you need it to.

Websites without Google Analytics

Google Analytics is elaborate. The platform takes time and energy to understand, and there are a variety of complex ways to analyze the data. Installing the tracking code and viewing the results are only half the battle. You also have to know what the insights mean and how to use that knowledge appropriately. Otherwise, you’re just hearing, not listening. These reasons alone are enough to scare people away from Google Analytics. But without any type of tracking or understanding of tracking on a website, it’s stagnant. If you or your marketing agency aren’t implementing Google Analytics on your website, how do you know if your digital marketing campaigns are reaching their full potential?

When you employ the experts who know Google Analytics, website design and development, digital marketing and SEO, you have an entire team behind you armed with powerful knowledge and the tools to use it wisely. We will know which features are attracting, converting or turning people away, can tailor your marketing efforts to match the findings we receive, reevaluate your landing pages and strengthen them to achieve results and make your website work for you and your business. It’s time to find out why your website is under-performing.

Let us help your website become your company’s most valuable asset. Appleton Creative is an award-winning, full-service Orlando marketing firm that specializes in search engine optimization. Appleton works with local, national and international clients to deliver inbound marketing strategies that put your website ahead of the competition. At Appleton, we want to learn about your business, empower your marketing team and be your creative resource. Your SEO goals are worth a conversation: contact us at 407-246-0092 or info@appletoncreative.com.