It’s very likely that you already have Google Analytics installed on your website. However, it’s also probable that at first glance, you will either find the dashboard very overwhelming or you are not entirely sure what to do with the volume of data.

Google Analytics is a free website analytics service provided by Google to help track and report your website traffic. The information is highly valuable to you to make business decisions, so our Knutsford Web Agency have put together 4 top tips on how to use Google Analytics, and how to extrapolate great data from inside our Google Analytics small business tutorial.

TIP 1 – What are your best performing pages?

Analytics can tell you which pages users will visit the most along with the average time users will spend on each page. Why is this important? Well you can look to see what works well and where you need to make improvements to underperforming pages, if necessary.

On your dashboard, if you navigate to Behaviour Flow >> Site Content >> All Pages, you will be presented with a performance page report. Switch the primary data to ‘Page Title’ and you can see which pages generate the most views, which pages receive a high bounce rate and so on…

If you invest your time in digital marketing and/or create landing pages or new product pages, this data will be invaluable to see how well you are performing. For example, if you have created a new Christmas product landing page with the most pages views but scores a high bounce rate, this would suggest users are leaving and missing the call-to-action, so you can make changes and test out the data.

TIP 2 – How are users visiting your website?

Ever wanted to know where visitors are viewing your website from, or what device they are using? Demographics is a very powerful tool that will allow you to identify your audience by age, device, gender and even location.

For example, let’s say you are an online clothing store selling both men’s and women’s clothing. By navigating to Audience >> Demographics >> Age/Gender, marketers can better understand what age-range and what percentage of gender visit the website.

In a world where users can view your website on multiple devices such mobile, tablet and desktop, it’s critical they receive the same website experience across the board. Located under Audience >> Demographics >> Mobile, you can see how users are visiting your website and how long they spend on each device. For example, if you find you get 70% traffic from mobile devices but also receive a high bounce rate, this could indicate that you need to make your website more mobile friendly and users are likely finding your website based on location.

Lastly, it doesn’t matter if you are a local Knutsford Web Agency or an international business, you want to see where your visitors are coming from. Again, if you visit Audience >> Demographics >> Geography, you can see where in the world your audience finds you.

TIP 3 – Create a website goal

Every website is built with a purpose, a call-to-action you want the user to accomplish when they visit your website.

For example, if you are a wedding venue, you may want visitors to complete a form to download your brochures. For e-commerce websites, your objective is to sell products and for other businesses, just filing out the contact form may be your website objective.

Tracking your call-to-action should be essential to monitor the success of your website and creating a website goal will help you track the progress of your website.

If you would like to set a goal up for your website, our Knutsford Web Agency can advise you on how to create your goals. Once set-up, you can monitor goal conversions by going to Conversions >> Goals >> Overview.

TIP 4 – Real Time Data

Real Time allows you to monitor activity as it happens on your website. This means you can see how many people are on your site right now, which pages they are interacting with and what device they are using to browse your website.

You can access real time data from the dashboard by going to Reports >> Real-Time

Putting together our tips on creating goals and how users visit your website, you can test out your goal by triggering event to covert into a goal. For example, let’s say you record clicking/tapping the telephone number as a goal, if you click on the phone number in a different browser, you can view the event happening and convert the event into a goal.

Google Analytics For Small Businesses

Google Analytics is an extremely powerful tool that will help small business websites take control and make better educated marketing decisions. But to help grow your website, business owners must know how to use Analytics and how to find relevant data. Hopefully, these four tips will help as a starting point to help find your feet in Analytics.

If you have any questions, need help settings Analytics up or creating an Analytics goal, untitled™ are Google Analytics certified partners. Give us a call on 01565 653616 or why not pop into our Knutsford web agency for a coffee and a natter.