Google Analytics is possibly the most important aspect of a website, especially in the constantly progressing world of websites. Today, almost every company has a website. Google Analytics helps to track and report your website traffic. Google Analytics is a commanding tool for brands and businesses. It is a tool that is able to track and report all website traffic to and from your website. It lets you see approximately everything your viewers are doing on your site, including how they got there. Google precisely packages it all up for you so that you can understand your users. Google developed Analytics so that you can have a better understanding of what is working for your brand and what is not. This will allow you to provide an improved experience for your audience.
What does Google Analytics focus on?
You want to create content that people actually want to read and care about. Google Analytics primarily has four main aspects that it focuses on. The data that is generated from these areas of your website will allow you to tweak your content accordingly. You will be able to identify what your audience wants to read, when they want to read it and how they want to read it. Google Analytics focuses on:
- Audience – Who is visiting your site?
- Obtainment – How are said people getting/accessing your site?
- Behaviour – What they are doing once they reach your site.
- Conversions – Are people doing what you want them to do?
The big question: Why should you use Google Analytics?
Analytics may be the most popular free tool you can use to measure the success of your inbound marketing efforts, and for good reason. With it, you can view the capacity of your website traffic, track where your users are coming from and where they’re going. You can also learn how and why your users are visiting your website over any given period of time. Google Analytics answers all your questions through customised reports, which are easy to read and interpret. It provides you with limitless amounts of data and information so that you can perfect your site. This creates a better user experience and overall audience growth.
Google Analytics allows you to view what your most popular pages are, through the All Pages Report. Typically, it shows your homepage at the top, but sometimes it is not what the viewers are always looking out for. Knowing which of your pages your audience is landing on or looking out for the most, will assist in restructuring your site. It even confirms that you shouldn’t be putting in any effort into a certain source because viewers cannot find that specific source.
It can be as simple or as complicated as per your requirements. Many business owners only scratch the surface of what’s possible within Google Analytics. There are countless functions that business owners should be utilising.
What are these functions?
- Top Pages Report – These are your top most influential pages and bounce rates.
- Navigation Path Reports – They allow you to know where your visitors frequently visit.
- The Top Traffic Channel Report – It allows you to see what is working or what is not working.
- Top Referrers Report – It allows you to see which site links send the most traffic.
- The Mobile Overview Report – This allows you to see the percentage of mobile and/or tablet visitors.
- Page Speed Report – It assists you in speeding up your site load times, which is great for larger websites.
- Real Time Overview Report – It allows you to see who is currently on your website.
How to get more out of Google Analytics
How popular are you?
If you want to get more sales to your site, the most important function you should make use of is your bounce rate. This is one of the most significant parts of the data when you are experiencing large proportions of viewers leaving the site after viewing only one page. This is one of the largest issues when it comes to uninteresting websites. The bounce rate informs you that you need to go back and enhance those pages. You can improve your call to action or create more engaging content. Your readers want to feel inspired or entertained when they are on your website. Try to use intriguing images or even videos to keep the visitor on your page for longer.
It’s time to convert your users
You need to analyse potential new markets by looking at the physical breakdown of what traffic gets to the site. By looking at the traffic and conversion rates, you will be able to identify multiple other sources that you may have overlooked and didn’t identify. After discovering new markets, you will then be able to seek out what your resonating content is. By identifying what pages have the most significant traffic, conversions, or results, you can obtain insights into what content is resonating with your audience. Once you identify what is resonating with them, you can then take the initiative and create more of that content. This content will ultimately make your readers convert more. The attribution data will allow you to analyse this in more detail. It is a piece of data that allows you to gain better insight into which sources are the most useful for your conversions.
How do they behave
To gain a better understanding of your viewers, you can analyse the behaviour flow. It utilises raw statistics to provide visual figures that can help interpret your web visitor’s intent. Factors are analysed such as what pages they interacted with and the page where they dropped off your site. A web visitor could leave your site for multiple reasons such as uninteresting content, boring visual factors, or your viewers did not find what they were looking for on your website. It is your job to give them a reason to stay longer and even come back in the future.
Stay on-trend
To create more of an interest for your target group, you can evaluate and examine the newest trends. This will better equip you in understanding how your target audience thinks and interacts online. By determining and evaluating the trends, you will be able to create a more effective call to action. You must, however, make sure that you are following the trends that interest your viewers. It will help you improve your site in accordance with those latest trends. Always remember that every element of data in Google Analytics is dependent on additional scopes to explain it. An info-graphic that goes viral will boost bounce rates exponentially. Thus, if you focus your efforts on trending data, you will be able to boost your site.
Create an experience
Your traffic is arguably one of the most important factors to focus on when analysing your website. Google Analytics will allow you to discover the sources of your traffic. You will come to know where your traffic sources are coming from. This data can show you what advertising methods are driving traffic to your website. This also shows you which efforts are working the best for your sales objectives and goals. You want to go the extra mile for your website users, by giving them a unique experience that they cannot get elsewhere. Your users don’t just want a bland website that talks about how great your brand and its products are. Try to excite, educate and inform your viewers as well. Once you have created said experience, Google Analytics will be able to show you if it is working or not.
Let’s analyse this
Through the use of Google Analytics, you can expose an incredible amount of data about your website that can be used to enhance your marketing and business development strategies. It may not be a crystal ball, but it can certainly help you make a targeted prediction about the direction your business is taking and how you can stay ahead in your industry.
The problem comes in that sometimes it can be hard to make sense of it all. When you are bombarded with statistics and data, you may not know what to do with it. We here at Cognite are professionally equipped to unpack your marketing analytics in a way that clearly outlines where you need to take corrective actions. You will be able to make informed decisions through easily understandable summarised reports of your marketing results.
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