Google Analytics can be one of your best friends when it comes to managing your website and understanding how well your campaigns perform. Most people don’t look further than the number of visitors, traffic sources and bounce rate, but there’s so much more to it – and these four tips can help you leverage this free tool to learn more about the people visiting your website, and to use those insights to improve its performance.
1) Connecting with Google Webmaster Tools
For accessing a set of reports under the tab “Search Engine Optimization”, you need to connect your GA with GWT. To do that, go to Traffic sources->Search Engine Optimization->Queries and click on Edit in Webmaster Tools Settings.
The new reports you’ll see (Queries, Landing Pages and Geographical Summary) will help you identify things like keywords that provide a good average position but low CTR (changing meta title and description can improve the CTR), landing pages that have low average position but good CTR (then you simply need to optimize those pages to improve their rankings), and who and where your target market is.
2) Email reports
You can use email reports to effectively communicate with your team about the GA data, or to send reports to those who don’t have access to your GA account. You can send the data in different formats (CSV, PDF, XML), immediately or on a regularly scheduled basis (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly), just click at the Email button at the top of the report you want to send. GA even allows you to choose the day of the week you want the data to be sent.
3) Enable Site search
To enable Site search, you need to have a search form on your website, and then locate Site search in your Google Analytics under the “Content” tab. It’s an extremely helpful feature that you can use to find out exactly how engaged the people are with your website, and in what type of content they are interested. It provides you with the exact phrases people are typing in, which you can actually use to optimize your pages and drive in more targeted traffic. If you’re running an e-commerce site, you can find out what products you may want to include in order to increase your sales, and if your website is a blog, it will get you a ton of ideas for articles.
4) Setting conversion goals
When setting conversion goals, you should start by asking yourself what is the main purpose of your website: do you sell tangible goods or services, make revenue from ads, want more email subscribers or engaged visitors? Setting up goals should be based on your business objectives, so for example if you’re running an e-commerce site, your goal might be to monitor contact form completions or the conversion rates for your products; if you’re running a blog, you can measure your best performing ads, etc.
In Google Analytics you can choose from four goal types: URL destination (ex. the “thank you” screen that your visitors will go to after submitting a form), visit duration (a visitor staying on your website for a predetermined period of time will trigger a conversion), pages per visit (conversion is triggered when a user visits a predetermined number of pages) and event (downloads, clicks on specific links or buttons, video views…).
Setting up goals will get you the insight about what keywords and traffic sources send you the visitors that convert, from which pages they sign up for your newsletter the most, and all other sorts of things that will help you manage your website according to the visitors’ behavior.
If you’ve worked hard to optimize your website for the search engines and to bring it in front of people, then don’t let the visitors leave it unhappy. Use the metrics and the insights they will provide to improve their experience by giving them exactly what they are looking for.
1) Connecting with Google Webmaster Tools
The new reports you’ll see (Queries, Landing Pages and Geographical Summary) will help you identify things like keywords that provide a good average position but low CTR (changing meta title and description can improve the CTR), landing pages that have low average position but good CTR (then you simply need to optimize those pages to improve their rankings), and who and where your target market is.
2) Email reports
You can use email reports to effectively communicate with your team about the GA data, or to send reports to those who don’t have access to your GA account. You can send the data in different formats (CSV, PDF, XML), immediately or on a regularly scheduled basis (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly), just click at the Email button at the top of the report you want to send. GA even allows you to choose the day of the week you want the data to be sent.
3) Enable Site search
To enable Site search, you need to have a search form on your website, and then locate Site search in your Google Analytics under the “Content” tab. It’s an extremely helpful feature that you can use to find out exactly how engaged the people are with your website, and in what type of content they are interested. It provides you with the exact phrases people are typing in, which you can actually use to optimize your pages and drive in more targeted traffic. If you’re running an e-commerce site, you can find out what products you may want to include in order to increase your sales, and if your website is a blog, it will get you a ton of ideas for articles.
4) Setting conversion goals
When setting conversion goals, you should start by asking yourself what is the main purpose of your website: do you sell tangible goods or services, make revenue from ads, want more email subscribers or engaged visitors? Setting up goals should be based on your business objectives, so for example if you’re running an e-commerce site, your goal might be to monitor contact form completions or the conversion rates for your products; if you’re running a blog, you can measure your best performing ads, etc.
In Google Analytics you can choose from four goal types: URL destination (ex. the “thank you” screen that your visitors will go to after submitting a form), visit duration (a visitor staying on your website for a predetermined period of time will trigger a conversion), pages per visit (conversion is triggered when a user visits a predetermined number of pages) and event (downloads, clicks on specific links or buttons, video views…).
Setting up goals will get you the insight about what keywords and traffic sources send you the visitors that convert, from which pages they sign up for your newsletter the most, and all other sorts of things that will help you manage your website according to the visitors’ behavior.
If you’ve worked hard to optimize your website for the search engines and to bring it in front of people, then don’t let the visitors leave it unhappy. Use the metrics and the insights they will provide to improve their experience by giving them exactly what they are looking for.
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