Google Analytics is the examination of the ‘behind the scenes’ functioning of a website’s interaction with its audience. The benefits are endless to any business particularly in this global economy where, with the increasing role of smart technology, your customer is web interactive. The ability of the software to collect valuable digital data is vital. From counting the number of website hits, to the landing page and even a user’s location.
The use of web analytics is a must for all website owners.
Without the use of a tool such as Google Analytics, a business is at a disadvantage from the beginning. These tools can be helpful in marketing strategies and are extremely beneficial to the trends within the company. Objectives for business owners may be to increase traffic to the website and to maintain a high on-line presence in the industry. Including SMART objectives can be a great tool.
- Specific, adding social media channels to the website.
- Measurable, the website should have these social icons available from the Home page of the website.
- Achievable, ensuring relevant content on your social media channels is important as it will increase brand awareness.
- Realistic, carry out this content creation in a short period of time, be realistic.
- Timescale, the objective can be achieved within a short period of time.
Key Performance Indicators are of great importance when measuring the performance of the website.
As seen in Google Analytics the bounce rate, page views, new versus returning visitors, engagement, device category and landing page are a clear indication on how well the website is performing. These are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which allows marketers to obtain information regards the emerging trends.The website, in many cases, can be the first interaction that a potential customer can make. Remember it is your online shop front, so to ensure the return of the customer, it is essential to have a website that is clear and easy to navigate to entice the customer to refer the page and to visit again.
Metrics such as increasing visitors by 10%, increasing click through rates from social media channels, reducing bounce rate are indicators of how a business is preforming and what steps are needed to ensure the continued growth of the business. Mobile metrics are important metrics as it can indicate if there are problems with the page being viewed i.e. if the mobile site is responsive and can also show if there is an increase in traffic through the mobile devices, as mobile grows it is essential for optimised mobile marketing.
Ensuring a website is responsive on all devices will see higher interaction with your website and business.
In Ireland, it is estimated that 86% of Irish consumers are using smartphones. Ensuring all marketing campaigns are optimised for a mobile device is also a vital aspect examples such as Facebook posts, Twitter headers, graphs, the submission form that would be found on websites and newsletter signup forms. This can all be measured through Google Analytics.
Since posting about this blog post and collecting data, I have been monitoring all interaction across the channels of my website. One report that I noticed was of location where the website has had a global impact. The power and necessity of having Google Analytics embedded on a website is endless. If implemented into your business strategy early you will have endless opportunities to target your audience.
In today’s economic climate marketers are trying to find the most efficient and effective way of contacting their customers and have decided the use of email to be the most cost effective way in the communication between the business and the consumer. Email remains the most used tool when dealing with marketing and return on investment.
This blog highlights the importance of objectives with online strategies and marketing being of the highest importance by using analytic tools to measure the current status of a business and visibility of a website and how to grow the business and measure the position within the market. Global digital trends in 2017 are live video streaming, augmented reality, virtual reality, viral marketing, behaviour- based email marketing and visual content. These will all be measurable with Google Analytics marketing tool.
I will leave you with this:
“Web developers not using google analytics is like a hairdresser cutting hair and not using a scissors”
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