Getting Started With Google Analytics 2015 | What’s Working and What’s Not
With ALL kinds of marketing our best advice is always ‘do more of what works’. So it is important to know where the most amount of traffic to your site is coming from and which source converts best. So read this article on getting started with google analytics (2015) so you can measure your marketing efforts and see what’s working and what’s not.
Google Analytics not only measures sales and conversions on your website, but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site and how you can keep them coming back. Google Analytics basically tracks the visitors on your website so you gain insights into what is working and what isn’t.
Traffic Sources
You can see things such as Traffic Sources so you know where all your traffic is coming from. For example if you realise that it isn’t worth your time and energy on Twitter, when all of your traffic is coming from Facebook. So you can cut down on Twitter and focus more on Facebook… boom, you have just saved hours off your week and improved your strategy for going forward.
Behaviour Flow
This great feature allows you to see where people drop off from your website, and thus improve those drop off pages so that your website converts more traffic. You might find that your ‘About’ page or ‘Prices’ page is the most commonly clicked on page after ‘Home’ – so therefore try to make those pages in particular really special.
Goal Tracking
So a massive error that people make when building their website and their business is not tracking their efforts. One of the major benefits with digital marketing for example is that you can measure all your efforts effectively – meaning you can see your ROI in almost real time, and improve constantly. Remember what gets measured, gets improved. So let’s get out of that ‘guess and hope’ mindset and get you tracking!
With Google Analytics you can track ‘goals’, for example a ‘goal ‘ maybe how people make it to your checkout and purchase, or go through your site and submit a request on your contact form even. This way you can tell what’s working for you, perhaps it’s a Facebook Ad, or you have an increase of direct traffic from a newspaper ad, or a referral site. If you found out that people coming from organic search results for example tend to be more likely to go on and purchase, then you know that investing more in SEO would be a good idea for your business!
Here’s another example… You may find people coming from your Twitter account may send the most amount of traffic to your landing page, BUT the conversion rate for them opting in isn’t very high. Comparatively you may find that people coming from your Facebook group are few in numbers but are actually consistently converting when going to your landing page, perhaps because you have built up a good rapport. That would mean that to improve your marketing efforts you would need to simply spend more time on the Facebook groups and scale that up (how to grow your Facebook group) so you get more of that high converting traffic. Or spend more time engaging with your audience on Twitter to build up better relationships that convert.
Here’s how to set up Goal Tracking
Don’t worry it’s not even that technical!
Simply go to your Google Analytics Account for your website or landing page, click on ‘Admin’ up at the top, then ‘Goals’ as you can see highlighted below.
All you have to do then is copy in the URL of your target page, for example with a subscription it might be your ‘Thank You’ page i.e. the page that people are redirected to after they subscribe. This page signifies that someone has converted (because there is no other way to get to this page).
You will have to leave it at least 24hrs before you can start seeing your conversion tracking goals come through as Google analytics isn’t in real time. You can see your tracking goals at work in the ‘Acquisition’ tab on the left of the Google Analytics ‘Reporting’ page.
Google Analytics is free, quick and easy to set up too. It is a 100% MUST for your website. There are other analytic sites, but none come close to Google’s platform especially being for free.
If you are not tech savvy then don’t worry, it isn’t that difficult to do. Here is a quick tutorial on how to set it up: https://youtu.be/DpRwouxW334
Alternatively you can get your website designer to set it up – it shouldn’t take them very long.
ACTION: If you haven’t already, set up Google Analytics for your website and your landing pages.
ACTION: Set a reminder right now to look back at your analytics on a monthly basis. See what’s working and what’s not – then take action to improve!