I’m going to preface this blog with the following: normally, I am not a numbers guy. As a writer, it should go without saying that I am more comfortable with words than numbers. That was until I got to really know Google Analytics The meat of your marketing is in the numbers, and that is why I’ve come to love them. How else do you know if what you are doing is worth a damn if you don’t have something to compare it to? Google Analytics, if you know what to look for and how to read it, can provide those crucial pieces of information that can help you make competent and effective marketing and web design decisions. Here are three important questions Google Analytics can help you answer.
How did you do?
When examined each month, Google Analytics is simply an effective way of determining the overall success of your marketing efforts. This is particularly helpful if something special happened, such as a promotion, the launch of a new product, a new blog post or a white paper. You can do this by looking at overall traffic to your site, traffic to particular landing pages You can use the data to see what worked as well as how the month compared to last month or even the year before. If you know the differences, it helps you tinker and fine-tune your marketing and campaigns. More you experiment, the more data you have to fall back on. The more data you have to fall back on, the better your judgment and decision-making should be when it comes to your marketing efforts.
How do people find you?
Google Analytics can provide you insights as to how exactly visitors are finding their way to your website. For the uninitiated, here’s a little rundown of the primary ways people can come to your website:
- Direct Traffic: Traffic to your site as a result of someone searching for you by name.
- Organic Traffic: Traffic to your site as a result of someone searching relevant keywords used on your site.
- Referral Traffic: Traffic to your site from a link located on a different site (such as a directory website).
- Social Traffic: Traffic to your site from your social media pages.
Determining the proportionality of how people find their way to your site can help you determine what areas you need to focus on and what steps to take with your marketing. Low organic traffic can be an indication that you should start blogging, which can help you introduce new keywords and opportunities for you to appear in search results. If your social numbers are down, this is an indicator you may need to pay more attention to social media. If you want to improve referral traffic, you should explore opportunities on other websites for you to include backlinks, like guest blogging or registering on a relevant directory site.
Where do visitors come from?
How visitors get to your site is important but so is the device they use. Google Analytics can tell you the number of sessions on your site from mobile and desktop devices. Why is that important, you may ask? Knowing the primary method of sessions to your website can help you make important design choices. While mobile optimization is always important, if a majority of sessions to your site come from a desktop, your homepage and landing page design choices should be made with this in mind. If most of your visitors come from mobile devices, you need to make sure the mobile experience of your website is polished. You may want to design an entirely different mobile version of your homepage or site or make sure the hierarchy of homepage sections reflects what the mobile experience of your site needs to be. Not a numbers geek? That’s OK, we are! Let’s talk about how to decipher your Google Analytics and build them into your marketing strateg