For the marketing professionals and webmasters of today, the use of Google Analytics is an absolutely essential tool for marketing in the digital era. Of course, that doesn’t mean that these assets are always effectively implemented. Many just barely scratch the surface of this tool’s capabilities.
That’s why we’re looking at ways you can make better use of analytics so that you can improve your website’s conversion rates. Google Analytics can provide your business with absolutely everything you need to know to improve your site in all aspects, whether collecting leads is your main objective, or you’re looking to better understand your target audience to increase sales. Here’s what you should pay attention to:
- Target Audience – If you want conversions, you have to know your target audience, first. You need to know who they are, details about days and times they are visiting and converting, as well as where they’re coming from, location-wise. Tracking demographics is absolutely key. You can’t convert an audience until you have a deep, insightful understanding of who they are.
- Page Performance – It’s necessary to track how well pages on your website are performing, as it will help you understand what users and potential customers are most engaged with on your site. Specifically, you’ll want to break down engagement metrics to see which pages are getting the most traffic as well as your top landing and exit pages. When you look at the landing pages report, you’ll see such key information as pages visited per session, average session duration, conversions resulting from page visits, and bounce rate. Knowing your bounce rate is important because it shows you which pages visitors found irrelevant to their original search. Bounce rate along with your page’s exit rate, which is essentially the last page they click from within your website before exiting your site altogether, are what help determine your site’s overall Google rank.
- Segmenting – Segmenting by channel type will help you better grasp which marketing efforts are outperforming others. This is something that you should keep a close eye on. When you look at this data, you’re likely going to find some key differences in traffic and conversion levels between various channels. With channels broken down, you can better analyze the data to see where you should prioritize your efforts.
- E-Commerce – If your business sells products online, then you’ll want to keep careful watch of the E-commerce reports. This data reveals insight about the shoppers’ journey, from site entry to final sales conversion. The Product Performance section, in particular, provides data on user interactions with your products as well as which ones are converting at higher rates. You’ll also want to pay close attention to which products are yielding high refund rates.
- Shopping Behavior – As you take a closer look at the Product Performance section, you’re going to want to look into the Shopping Behavior data. Say, for example, that a certain product or service performed very well a year ago, but it only has one unique purchase in the new year. What’s stopping visitors from purchasing this product now? Whether due to competitive pricing, a lack of reviews, or a simple error in advertising, you’ll learn the answer when you look at products with low cart to detail rates (or buy to detail rates). Regular evaluation of these behaviors can get your sales and conversion rates back on target.
If you want to improve your website’s conversion rates, you must have a firm understanding of who your visitors are, where they’re coming from, and their site habits once they click. This is where the use of Analytics comes into play. This is an invaluable tool that will help you make better-informed marketing decisions so that you can sit back and watch your business grow.
