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Tracking the success of your
website - Google Analytics
By - Andrew Seidel
How successful is
your website? Do you really know how well it is performing for your business?
Many website owners
make the mistake of thinking that the more traffic they get to their website the
better, and they work towards this end. It is better to focus efforts on
bringing in targeted traffic that will convert to sales or enquiries. To
understand more correctly how well a website is performing, and who is visiting
the website, a good website statistics package is required, as well as an
understanding of the data these website reports produce.
With many website
hosting packages free website statistics are available. However, the information
is not always easy to understand or doesn't always give you the information in a
way that is easy to understand.
Google
Analytics
Google Analytics is a
great application that Google provides absolutely free. It tracks all activity
on your website, not just visits through Google. All you need is a Google
Account, and FTP access to your website to insert a small amount of code in your
website, and away you go. If you don't already have a Google account, I
encourage you to set one up as soon as possible!
You can do so at: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
Not only will you have access to Google Analytics, but having a Google account
gives you a whole host of other tools.
Visitors
As a start, it is a
good idea to find out how many visitors are coming to your website. Visitors are
broken down into new and returning visitors. While it is great to attract new
visitors to your site, you should aim to see a decent percentage of returning
visitors as well, as this gives a good indication that people find your site
interesting enough to come back to.
Depth of
Visit
How many pages are
viewed during a visit to your website?
Length of
Visit
How much time do
visitors spend on your website? If they are spending very little time on your
site when you have an information-rich site, then you need to start looking at
the navigational report to find out where you are losing them.
Keywords
The Keywords that
people are finding your website through, are a good indication of what keywords
are performing well for you in the search engines. Are the keywords that are
displaying for you truly reflective of what you offer? If not, then it is time
to revamp the content on your website.
Referrals
Which referrals drive
the highest quality traffic? This report lists activity coming via referrals
from other websites. This is useful for tracking links that you cannot control.
You can gauge the overall effectiveness and importance of PR activities,
partnerships, etc. The referrals are compared to the number of visits, page
views per visit, conversion rates and average value per visit.
Navigation
Which navigation
paths resulted in conversions during the visit? For each navigation path, this
report shows conversion rates and the value per visit.
Exit
Pages
From which pages do
visitors commonly exit your site? This report shows the number of exits from
pages on your site. If you notice a high number of exits for specific pages, it
is time to seriously analyze these pages and try to improve them, because it is
very likely that people are not getting the information they expect or want.
Conversion
data
Arguably this is one
of the most important pieces of information. Conversion data gives you a true
understanding of how successful your site really is.
Conversional goals
can be set up through your Analytics settings. Take time to think about what
goals you want to track. These may be sales or web enquiries you are receiving,
or specific pages in your website that you want to focus on. Keep in mind that
if your visitor contacts you by phone or fax, this will not be reflected in the
goal conversions. However, you can set your contact page as being a goal to get
a feel for how many people are looking for your contact details.
By monitoring the
changes in conversion rates for your primary goals, you can monitor the overall
effectiveness of website changes, marketing roll-outs and other events.
Organic
vs Pay-Per-Click comparison
How does paid search
compare with organic search in driving high quality traffic to my site? This
report compares paid and organic referrals with respect to number of visits,
page views per visit, conversion rates and average visit value.
Date
Range
Throughout the report
it gives you the ability to track your website statistics between various date
ranges. At this time it only allows you to see a maximum of a months data at a
time. The reports also allows you to compare data, so you can find out how your
site is tracking against a previous date period.
Beta
Version
The current Beta
which is just in the process of being released, provides a lot more flexibility,
and one of the most exciting things about the new version is that it allows you
to schedule reports, daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. This is great news as
it makes the process of accessing your website reports even easier.
Google
Analytics Features
There are many other
features that Google Analytics offers, and it is worth spending the time having
a good look at them and trying to understand what they have to offer you.
Alternatively, speak to your webmaster or SEO specialist and get them to help
you understand how Google Analytics can help improve your website performance.
By having a better understanding of it, you can potentially increase your
profits significantly.
Final
Note
When you analyze the
data from your website statistics with the intention of improving your site, or
getting a good indication of how your site is performing, it is important that
you have a decent snapshot of the data to work from, i.e. make sure that you are
not making assumptions based on the data of a single day, as trends vary over
time, and even from day-to-day.
IMPORTANTLY- never
become complacent! Make sure you review your website reports at least weekly or
monthly--if not daily--to make sure that your website is performing to your
expectations.
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About The Author:
Andrew Seidel is the
Director of Quantum Web Solutions, specializing in
web
site design
and web
site promotion.
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