When trying to evaluate your online marketing strategy, one of the most useful tools at your disposal is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a great program for assessing website activity to increase return on investment (ROI). Integrating Google Analytics into your business’ website can transform the way you think about your site, by providing you with a wealth of data.
A Web Designer’s Favorite Thing
In the past, we have identified such programs as Firebug and Notepad++ as some of web designers’ favorite things. Google Analytics should certainly be among that list. Google Analytics generates reports on the channels bringing traffic to your website, allowing you to assess where your marketing is most effective and where it needs to be boosted, or possibly eliminated, as a cost-saving measure. Traffic reports are just the beginning of why Google Analytics ranks as one of web designers’ favorite things.
Google Analytics Data
Google Analytics’ main strength is that it provides a wealth of data in different formats and for different website functions. You can even track specific types of site visitors over time, looking at new visitors versus returning ones, and tracking their conversion into customers, email subscribers and more. Similarly, Google Analytics offers information on bounce rates, which are a quantification of how well website users interact with your website when redirected there. If everyone leaves without interacting with the site, then your site has a bounce rate of 100%. Alternately, if every visitor interacts at some level, your bounce rate is 0%.
Businesses whose primary interaction is with other businesses (B2B) can also benefit immensely from Google Analytics. Businesses are able to track the level of traffic they receive from their target audience and how many individuals landing on their page are from outside that demographic. That data can then be segmented so that businesses can track requests by company type, offering up a closer look at conversion data.
Improving ROI
Once you have all the data from Google Analytics, it can seem a little overwhelming. What do you do with all of this information? How can it help you improve your ROI? Google Analytics data provides all of the key information necessary for improving ROI. One place to start is by examining what search data brought people to your website. Based on this data, you can then better optimize your website for those search terms, improving your SEO and moving your site up in Google rankings. Another factor that can be tracked using Google Analytics is the number of mobile users accessing your site. If you are seeing a lot of mobile activity, a wise investment may be mobile device optimization for your site, because typical web browser pages can be difficult to use on mobile devices.
Essentially, the data provided by Google Analytics can offer a great set of guidelines on where to expend your energy for the greatest ROI, allowing you to track how that effort is playing out over time. This means you might spend some extra time trying to improve the performance of Twitter for your page, but if it continues to underperform, you might drop it altogether. Google Analytics provides the necessary information to make these decisions.
