5 Reasons To Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics has all the data you need, you just need to know what data you're looking for and it becomes an invaluable tool.

So you've got a great looking website and as far as you can tell everything is fine. You and your staff use it most days and no one has any issues with it, so it must be working well. Right?

According to builtwith.com, nearly 30 million websites are using Google Analytics - and with good reason! When working with clients one of the very first questions we ask is 'what is the goal of this website?', and this serves as a guide for everything we do. A website might be the best looking set of pages on the internet, but if the user doesn't do what you expect them to do you're not going to achieve results. 

There's no point in identifying your goals if you aren't going to be able to measure them. Google analytics can help you keep track of traffic to the site, engagement with the site in general or with specific important pages and the conversions on the site - these are the most popular things to measure.

Why You Should Use Analytics

We all want insight into why our customers buy, here's some of the key things you can learn from GA. 

  See where your visitors are coming from

How are your potential customers finding you? It could be Google search results, social media, an online directory like Yelp or maybe they're typing your address straight in to the search bar. It's vital to have a grasp of where your biggest sources of traffic are arriving from, helping you to optimise different marketing channels and allocate resources accordingly. 

Looking at the 'Aquisition' section of the report will let you know where your traffic is coming from and the pages they are landing on. 

Reveal your best performing content

It can be fascinating to see what customers are actually looking at on your website. It's important to try and set a clear pathway to guide your user around, and with Google Analytics you can see exactly what pages are being looked at and for how long.

It could be that the navigation isn't clear enough or that people aren't finding your best pages, Analytics helps to visually show what's working well, allowing you to make improvements where necessary.

See where people are dropping out

One of the most vital pieces of information that every website owner needs to know - what needs work? Does your website have a multi-step shopping basket? It could be that potential buyers are consistently dropping out at the same checkout point and it needs to made more user friendly.

Analytics can highlight pages with a high exit rate, allowing you to hone in on exactly what pages need improving.

Find OUT Where people are converting

It's lovely to have traffic, for people to be looking at your site and reading the content, but at the end of the day we want conversions. Whether your site aim is to generate leads which you manually follow up or you have an ecommerce site and sell online directly, you need to measure who is completing these goals and where. 

Setting up your contact form, newsletter sign up etc as a goal means you'll be able to track the amount of people who complete that action. If you set up your ecommerce correctly you can track anything from AOV (average order value) to the performance of individual products.

Reports can be customised to your needs

Analytics is a huge data hub and at first impression, it can be quite overwhelming. Fortunately, it's all set up to allow you to have custom reports that let you cherry pick the data you need. Businesses can then use these reports to focus on goals and getting the most out of the website.

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