Would you like to understand more about your customer’s journey on your website? Like, how did they find your website and what did they do once they got there? If you just shook your head, “yes”, this podcast is for you. Today, we discuss all things website analytics.
We invite you to listen here on our website or from your favorite podcast player. Scroll below for episode summary and other resources.
Episode 13 Summary: Website Analytics 101
- Your small business website should be thought of as your online home base, even if you have a brick and mortar business. And much like you can measure activity of people in your store and interest in your business by tracking phone calls, sales, and inventory, and while assisting people by answering questions, helping them find what they are looking for, and hearing real-time feedback on how well – or not – a product or service fits their needs, you can do do these same things with your website analytics.
- We recommend using Google Analytics for your website analytics tool, but know that many website platforms offer their own website analytics, though it’s often much less robust. If you use WordPress, there are some plugins that include analytics functionality, too.
- Google Analytics is considered the most comprehensive analytics tool out there, and can even become overwhelming due to how comprehensive it is.
- On top of being the most comprehensive website analytics tool available, it’s also completely free and it syncs up with other important Google products like Google Ads and Search Console.
- No matter what analytics software you choose, you’ll be able to access some standard data on the people who visit your website. You can see things like the number of visitors you have to your website on any given day, week, or month. You can see new vs returning visitors, the number of pages that have been viewed on your site, the average number of pages viewed per visit, the most popular pages on your site, and main sources of traffic like organic search or social or paid ads.
- If you use Google Analytics, you can view the flow chart to see how your customers travel through your site. It will allow you to see where you may have opportunities on pages to improve the experience. For example, if your customer consistently makes it to your blog page but then leaves the site, it tells you something with the page or connection is blocking the journey.
- If you run conversion ads to your website or have a way for people to sign up with you or purchase online, Google Analytics gives you a way to set up what are called Goals. An easy example of a Goal would be to track the number of people who reached an order confirmation page or page that thanks a visitor for submitting a contact form.
- You will definitely find discrepancies in data between analytics sources. For example, your social media ads or Google ads will report a different number of people sent to your website or landing page than what Google will report from those same sources. This is normal and should be expected.
- Since you can’t see the people visiting your website and what pages they are visiting like you can see people shopping in your brick and mortar store, a website analytics tool is how you gather and understand that same type of information. Once you have that information, you can make adjustments to your website, pricing, marketing, service or product offerings, or business overall.
Episode 13 Takeaways:
Liz: Make sure you have some kind of analytics tool on your site, and start by focusing on some basic data points, comparing them month over month.
Ronda: Make sure you own it, meaning your analytics account. Don’t let an outside vendor set up your analytics account for you. And don’t forget our stop light rules!
Resources: Do I really need a website? episode
Listen On: Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify
Continue the Conversation:
Liz Jostes – LinkedIn, Website
Ronda VanBuren – LinkedIn, Website
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