Google Analytics for Newbies
Google Analytics is the most widely-used website traffic analytics program. Analytics lets you know how your website is performing. Analytics tell you who comes to your webpage, who stays, what they do, etc. They measure a lot of essential information, so what should you use Google Analytics to measure and why?
The Type of Visitor
Your website brings in two types of visitors: new and unique. While it’s great to have lots of new visitors, if your return traffic is low, then that’s a problem. It means your page isn’t converting, which probably means that you aren’t making any money. Use poor conversion rate data to create a better customer experience so that you start to get return visitors.
The Amount of Time Visitors Spend on a Page
Analytics measure how long visitors spend on your page and what they do. If visitors hit your site and immediately leave, it means that they didn’t find what they wanted or that your page wasn’t relevant for their search needs. Conversely, if they spend too long but don’t interact with your content, then it could mean that you have too much going on and that they had to spend a long time reading to understand your page. Chances are, they won’t be coming back unless you revise your site.
Your Site’s Bounce or Abandonment Rate
The bounce rate is how many times new visitors land on your page and leave without interacting with your content. There can be multiple reasons for bounce rates, but suffice to say that visitors are looking for easy experiences. If you have a checkout process, make sure there aren’t a lot of tasks that the customer has to complete before checking out. Likewise, if you have a blog, make sure that your blog includes similar reads or read that the audience might also be interested in to keep them navigating your site instead of reading and bouncing.
What Visitors Do on Your Page
Google Analytics also tracks what visitors do when they’re on your page. What do they click on? What actions do they take? Are they following-through? Are your calls to action working? By measuring this, you can see where the chain breaks down and make appropriate modifications; likewise, you can see what’s working and replicate that.
Which Pages are Visited the Most
Typically, your home page is going to be your most-visited page, but what other pages do users visit? Knowing this will help you determine which pages visitors like and which aren’t as effective. It will enable you to repair pages that are not as oft visited; though, in some cases, it’s to be expected. For example, your ‘about’ page might be perfectly fine, but it doesn’t get as much traffic because that’s not what people are there for.
How Visitors Reach Your Site
Lastly, Google Analytics shows how visitors are reaching your site. Think of it this way, if you had a physical store instead of a website, wouldn’t you want to know how they heard about you? This metrics does just that. You’ll be able to tell how many visitors arrived via direct URL, what search terms visitors found when arriving via search engine, who was referred from another site, etc. If you know what your audience is doing and how they’re finding you, then you can increase your efforts to reach them, which will in turn increase your page’s traffic and your page’s overall performance.
There is more that can be done with Google Analytics; learning how to use it to measure your page’s performance will help you better focus your resources to create a better website and content.
Creating great content is only part of the story; the other part is knowing how to measure your content’s performance. The Storyteller Agency does it all and can use analytics to boost your webpage’s performance and to improve your business.
