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September 13, 2019

Top Tips When Using Web Analytics



When running an online business, there are all sorts of factors to take into consideration. Whether it be understanding your target audience, marketing your products and services effectively, or monitoring web analytics, being committed to your brand is crucial. Analyzing the behavior of those who visit your website can help when it comes to maintaining a successful business. With that in mind, here are some top tips when using web analytics.



Understand Your Success

No matter what type of business you’re running, using tools such as Google Analytics can be great for collecting information about your business website, but it’s important that you consider what type of success you want for your company. To begin with, you should create a measurement plan that outlines your overall business objectives. When adding Google (News - Alert) Analytics to your page, you will start to collect interesting information about how consumers use your website.

Know Your Website Funnel

Another top tip to help you understand web analytics is by knowing your website funnel. Regardless of what you sell, every business has a funnel. The top of the funnel indicates the total amount of traffic that your website has received, whereas the bottom of the funnel is the total number completed actions that are specific to your page, whether it be making a purchase, downloading content, or contacting you directly. In the in-between of the funnel, there are a number of steps or pages that your visitors will take. Understanding your business funnel is another way to monitor who visits your website.

Use Campaign Tracking Codes

Once you’ve got to grips with how your page as a whole is converting, the next step of the process is to begin to break everything down to each of the marketing initiatives that you run. Doing this can help you not only identify how much traffic you have lost through your website funnel but also which types of marketing efforts provide the best quality traffic. You should begin using campaign tracking, which can help you understand the reports used to track other sources, including partnerships and emails.

Remain Focused

One of the biggest benefits of web analytic tools is that there is tons of data available, but this can also be a downside too. When you use a web analytic tool like Google Analytics, it’s important that you have specific questions in mind. It can be all too easy to lose track of what you are doing and drill down into reports that don’t have the answers you’re looking for. While it’s easy to look at various types of reports, you need to remain focused and have a clear end goal in mind. Once you establish what you’re doing, you can begin drilling down to the next level.

Filter Your Data

It’s important that you’re able to filter the traffic to your website from the people you work with, helping to give you a better idea of how your page is performing. In most cases, you will use analytic tools to track how users and external customers interact with your website, but when including internal traffic, it can be hard to establish how your consumers are actually engaging with your page. To gain a better understanding, you may want to consider removing your own IP address to increase overall website conversion. When you set up filters, it’s always worth creating several profiles, one having filters included and another having all your website data included.

Automate Reports and Dashboards

All in all, the reports that are needed in your business should answer the same general questions, which should come from your business or measurement plan. To make things a little bit easier, you can create a dashboard of specific questions or for specific people, as well as automating them to send on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, meaning you don’t have to be constantly logged in to your analytics account to view your reports. You are much more likely to check your performance if you don’t have to do too much work.

Track Onsite Search

With many websites becoming easier to navigate than ever, it’s only natural that more and more people are beginning to search in the same way that they would on search engines such as Google. Visitors want results, and they want them fast, meaning that we have become much more impatient and crave instant gratification. No matter the sort of business you run, you need to remember that your customers should always be your number one priority. And, if you have included a search button on your business page, it’s definitely worth tracking what your customers are searching for and where. Not only will this give you a wealth of information, you can use such data when planning future projects and activities.

Monitor Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who go onto your website and then click off without anymore interaction (if they only view one page). Generally, an acceptable bounce rate is usually between 40% - 60%, but this includes websites across many types of sectors. To get a clearer view of bounce rates, you will need to monitor the types of pages your users are looking at and how they are finding them. Some pages will have a higher bounce rate than others. For example, many users want to contact a business for help and support, so your ‘Contact Us’ page or FAQs page may be higher.

Learn and Improve

In the business world, there’s always room for improvement. If you’re starting a new online business, it can be challenging to know where to start. Having the right skills and experience in place can make a big difference, so you may want to consider studying a business intelligence mba online to help you learn more about analytics.

No matter how you go about it, keeping track of who visits your business website is crucial. Understanding what content your consumers are accessing can help when it comes to marketing your brand, and having a broader knowledge of bounce rate, campaign tracking, and your website funnel can help when using web analytics.



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