Google analytics is a powerful tool that jams a lot of website data into one place. It’s an amazing resource to help you understand how your website and marketing campaigns are performing. But a lot of businesses don’t take full advantage of this free service. They don’t know how to determine which pieces of information are critical to the success of their business.
One major benefit in utilizing analytics is to track how visitors are interacting with your site. But if you’re not sure what data to look for or how to set up your analytics, then you might be missing out on very important information.
My blog today is the second in a series of blogs about google analytics. If you haven’t had a chance to read google analytics basics part 1, you can find it here.
In the first post, I covered a lot of basic information, such as how to set up an analytics account and what type of information is included in the free service. In this second edition, we will be going a little more in-depth and cover the topic of analyzing visitor activity on your site.
Analytics is a valuable tool to discover the quality of traffic that’s coming from specific sources
Especially traffic that’s coming to the site from your digital campaigns. In this post, I’ll provide you with some of the data that, as a digital specialist, I analyze on a regular basis for our clients and their campaigns to help see if we’re receiving the best call lists for sale results. I’ve also provided an example situation where each element of this data comes in handy.
What are my visitors doing?
The majority of the data in analytics are insights into how visitors are interacting with your site and its content. It’s important to monitor this data in order to answer a lot of questions like who is my audience? Where are they coming from? And what are they doing once they’re on my site?
Analytics example 1
Under the “acquisition” tab, there’s a “source/medium” outbreak. This is probably one of the most important pieces of data in analytics for a digital specialist.
This section provides the information of how many sessions certain sources are driving and the quality of those sources. Analyzing the quality of traffic each source is driving to the site can be valuable. This information directs you for digital marketing opportunities or shows insights into traffic from current campaigns.
Your business is running a display campaign but you see
The majority of the traffic coming from this campaign is immediately bouncing from your site. You might want to re-evaluate the audience you’re targeting with this display campaign because it might be irrelevant traffic you’re directing to your site.
Another section that’s a go-to for digital specialists like myself is the behavior flow chart. This is located in the “behavior” section.
This chart categorizes how the majority f traffic on IS Lists your site is navigating through different pages and maybe eventually even converting. It also provides insight into where traffic might be leaving or exiting your site more than normal.
Example:
You’re reviewing your site’s behavior flow chart and notice a large amount of drop off on your email newsletter signup page after a site redesign. This is unusual because, before the redesign, the site was receiving a 70% signup rate when visitors landed on this page.
After investigating the situation, you realize that the newsletter form to signup is below the fold when visitors arrive on both the desktop and mobile page. After updating the page layout so the form is above the fold, drop off rates decreased and signup conversions went back up to normal.
