Use Google Analytics To Improve Your Website
Do you want to improve your website this new year?
Google Analytics is the most comprehensive tracking tool available on the market. It gives you detailed data about your website visitors and the actions they take on your site. You’ll be able to see what people are doing on your site after they click on an email you send them and beyond.
By effectively using Google Analytics, you can stop making blind guesses and start making data-driven marketing decisions to boost your bottom line.
If you’re looking to get a head start to improve your website this new year, we’ll walk you through how to make data-driven decisions using Google Analytics.
Stay in the know about your website’s performance. Let Constant Contact’s experts set up your Google Analytics.
Add Google Analytics to your site
Before you dive in to access the data, you need to make sure that Google Analytics is properly set up on your website. Wrongly implemented tracking will skew your tracking data, leading you to take wrong decisions.
To implement Google Analytics, all you need to do is to create an account, connect your website with Analytics and add the tracking code snippet to the <head> section of your website.
If you’re on WordPress, you can use this simple guide to help you get set up with Google Analytics.
Upon the setup, it may take a few hours to start gathering your website data. Let’s take a look at a few different aspects of using Google Analytics to improve your site.
Focus on your goals
To make informed decisions, you’ll need to have a clear focus on your goals and need to figure out how to accomplish them by setting objectives.
For example, in this new year, if your goal is to drive more conversions from your blog, it is vital to know what type of content resonates best with your audience.
One way to review your content is by going to your Pages report in Google Analytics. There you can identify which blog posts and pages drive the most conversions. It may not be worth your time to focus on content that drives tons of traffic without conversions.
Now that doesn’t mean every blog post needs to drive conversions. Instead, every piece of content you produce should meet your objectives.
For example, if you monetize your blog with AdSense, you might want to track AdSense clicks on your blog posts to figure out the type of content that generates the most revenue. This way you can create more similar content on your blog that is likely to generate more revenue.
After finding the type of content that brings positive results, come up with more content ideas for your blog and add them to your editorial calendar.
Study bounce rate
One of the most important metrics to keep an eye on is bounce rate. In simple terms, bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits on your site. It tells you whether your visitors stick to your site or leave after their first-page visit.
Generally speaking, the lower your bounce rate, the more engaging your site is, the better for your business.
If a large number of visitors navigate away from your site after viewing only one page, this means you need to optimize your content or use better calls to action that intrigue visitors to dive deeper into your offering.
Some ways to improve your bounce rate are:
- Make your content enticing and consumable in short span of time.
- Reduce the loading time of your site and make your landing pages visually appealing.
- Create anexit-intent popup that shows visitors another useful resource on your site. Using OptinMonster, you can show targeted pop-up campaigns throughout your site at the precise moment your visitors are about to leave.
Study behavior flow
Aside from showing you valuable metrics, Google Analytics allows you to conduct user flow analysis to understand how your visitors explore your site to take action that you deem to be of value.
By studying behavior flow of your users, you can figure out leaky spots in your sales funnel. Once you identified those areas, you can take measures to reduce the drop-off and boost sales and revenue.
For tracking conversions, be sure to set up Google Analytics goals in the first place. And to track sales and revenue, you’ll have to enable e-commerce tracking in Google Analytics.
Conduct an annual content audit
If you’re investing in content marketing, you’ll need to focus on a few different metrics to determine your content marketing return on investment (ROI). Calculating your content marketing ROI enables you to identify whether your content marketing investment is paying off.
For most websites, the primary goal of content marketing is to attract quality leads and turn them into customers. However, you can’t expect to convert every website visitor that lands on your site into customers. That means besides conversions, you’ll have to focus on other key metrics, like lead quality, traffic, and onsite engagement.
When conducting a yearly content audit on your site, below are a few things you need to consider.
- Find keywords that attract the most traffic to your site. Understand the intention of your organic visitors and figure out whether your articles deliver what your visitors want.
- Identify your past content marketing pieces that have performed best in terms of driving traffic and engagement. Be sure to add similar article ideas to your editorial calendar.
- Eliminate content that no longer reflects your business.
I hope the above tips give you some insights into using Google Analytics to improve your website’s bottom line.
It only takes a few minutes to get going, and you’ll be on your way to creating marketing strategies that will help you improve your website this new year.