Google Analytics is one of the most vital tools when it comes to gaining insight into your business’s website, especially for digital marketing data. Did your social media ad drive traffic back to your website? Did your e-blast successfully lead customers to your website contact form? Are your keyword-rich blogs ranking as top viewed pages on your website? For all of these questions and more, Google Analytics holds the answers.
Google Analytics offers endless data, but there are a few key metrics worth paying special attention to.
Acquisition Source
If your business is utilizing social media marketing and SEO for your website (which it should be!), the acquisition source can give you a good idea of what is working and what isn’t.
Acquisition sources include organic searches from search engines like Google, direct traffic of people visiting your site by directly entering your URL in their address bar, traffic from social media, referral traffic from your website having been linked on other external websites, and traffic from email.
For instance, if you’re spending a lot of time crafting content for social media, but only 2% of your overall traffic is coming from there, it may be a sign that you need to reevaluate your social media strategy to drive more traffic, or that your time may be better spent investing in sources that your target audience is coming in from like organic search or email.
Top Pages
After you see where your visitors are coming from, you should know which pages they’re viewing the most. People, in general, come to websites to view a few pages of relevant information but leave once they have found what they are looking for.
Paying attention to which pages rank as your top-visited pages can give insight into which marketing campaigns are performing well (think: if your campaign encompasses a downloadable checklist landing page and several blogs, you would want these assets ranking as your top trafficked pages) and can also shed light on potential issues, like if your home page is not listed in the most visited pages and visitors are entering the site in an unusual way.
Device
Google really does know everything, including the type of device that people use to view your website. This is beneficial knowledge to utilize when you’re designing your website. If all of your customers are viewing your website from mobile devices, then you will want to optimize for mobile by shrinking images and image files when you can, shortening page copy to include only the most necessary information, and making sure your site is able to load quickly.
Site Speed
Site speed is a crucial metric to pay close attention to. If your website isn’t fast enough, more often than not users will “bounce” off of, or leave, your website to find another website with the same information that loads faster. Best practice for an ideal site speed is under two seconds.
Google Analytics has seemingly endless capabilities, so if you find yourself feeling a little lost, fear not. The answers you’re looking for are in there, and consulting the help from a professional digital marketing agency can help you fully understand your data.
Learn more about the top 3 metrics to watch in Google Analytics.
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