5 Ways Google Analytics Can Improve Your Website

The new Google Analytics will give you the essential insights you need to be ready for what's next.

5 Ways Google Analytics Can Improve Your Website

Google Analytics is one of the most valuable free tools available for website owners, providing detailed data about traffic and visitors which can be used to evaluate how your content performs and attracts new visitors. In this post, we’ll look at some of the key metrics, Google Analytics provides and shows how these can be used to improve your website.

1. Use traffic data to identify under-performing channels

Google Analytics Display Traffic Explained | DashThis

Google Analytics’ acquisition data shows you how much traffic you have acquired from each of the different channels. These are organic traffic, e.g. visitors who have found you from search engines; direct traffic, e.g. visitors who typed your URL into their browser; referral traffic, those who have clicked on links on other sites; and social traffic, i.e., those who have come from social media platforms.

It is also possible to analyse these sources more deeply, for example, you can check your social media data to see whether you got more traffic from Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or see how much organic traffic comes from Google, Bing and Yahoo. You can also look at the medium that visitors use to find your site. This can tell you about the performance of your advertising campaigns by identifying the ads that send you the most traffic.

With all this valuable information at your fingertips, it makes it much easier to understand where your websites’ strengths and weaknesses lie. You might, for example, find that you perform well on search engines but that you need to put more effort into increasing your social media traffic.

2. Find which pages get the most visitors

How to Find the Most Popular Pages on your Website Google Analytics

Equally important to understanding where your visitors come from is knowing what pages they go to on your website. And it is possible, using the behavior report, to see this in detail.

By looking at the Site Content > All Pages data, you’ll get a ranked list showing which pages get the most visits over your chosen timescale. You can also drill down further by using the ‘secondary dimension’ tool to discover where the visitors for each page comes from.

The importance of this data is that it enables you to get a better understanding of your website’s content. For example, if pages are not getting much organic traffic it hints that you might need to look at your SEO or rewrite the content to make it more useful to your visitors. Looking at your most successful content and figuring out why it attracts traffic well, can help you make improvements across your site.

3. How low is your bounce rate?

What Is A Good Bounce Rate? (and How To Improve It)

The bounce rate is the term used to describe the percentage of visitors who only visit one page before leaving. Whilst no web page will ever get a 0% bounce rate, some types of pages, such as product pages, are more likely to get high bounce rates. If someone wants something specific, they’ll quickly scoot off back to Google if they don’t find what they’re looking for.

High bounce rates, however, are a cause for concern, especially on your homepage or key landing pages. If this is the case, it’s an indication that you may need to make improvements to the content or the design in order to get visitors to move to other parts of your website.

It could be that your content is not relevant, that the page isn’t attractive or easy to read, there may annoying popups, or the page may even load too slowly for the user to hang around. Whilst Google Analytics cannot tell you what the problem is, it’s very good at showing that there is a problem.

4. Find issues from analyzing session data

In-Depth Guide on How to Leverage Google Analytics Channels

Two other great metrics that Google Analytics provides you with are the average number of pages per session and the average time on page.

The pages per session data show you how many pages the average user visits when they land on your website. Depending on the nature of your site, you’ll have an idea of how many pages you would like each visitor to see. If you’ve an eCommerce site or blog, for example, you’ll want a visitor to visit lots of pages, if your site has only a couple of service pages then, obviously, you’ll be looking at a smaller figure.

The importance of this data is that it will tell you if you are meeting your optimum figure. If you sell a hundred different types of men’s shoes and the average visitor only looks at two or three pages, then that could indicate a range of issues: poor product selection or availability, high prices, lack of detailed product information, etc. Further drilling down may point to a more precise answer.

The time on page data (found in the behaviour section) tells you how much time the average visitor stays on each page. This can be very useful in understanding how well visitors engage with your content and if they actually read all the pages. If you know it takes three or four minutes to read the page and that the average visitor only spends 30 seconds, then it is obvious that there is something stopping your content from getting read. It could indicate boring or badly written content, information being hard to find or something off-putting being mentioned partway through.

5. Use behaviour flow to discover conversion barriers

The Six Most Misunderstood Metrics in Google Analytics

If you run an online business, there will be a sales pathway that you want your customers to take as they go through your website, for example, homepage > product category page > individual product page > shopping basket > order details > payment page.

Using the Google Analytics’ behaviour flow tool, you will be able to see how visitors actually move through your site: where they land, what pages they visit as they move and where they exit the site. You’ll also see what proportions move from A to B to C, etc., so that you’ll understand the drop-off rates at each stage of the buying process.

Although it is natural to see a drop-off of visitor numbers as they head towards the payment page, one of the biggest benefits of this tool is that it clearly shows where the biggest drop-off points are. Understanding where these are can help you eradicate barriers to sales or other goals. For example, if you have a large drop-off between the order details and payment page, it could be that you have an issue with the checkout process. Perhaps you are asking for too much information or your delivery pricing is not clear.

Although it is up to you to determine the cause, the data will tell you if there is an obstacle at that point in the process that prevents users from completing the sale. Removing that obstacle is a clear way to improve your conversion rates.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for helping businesses improve their websites. It’s not designed to give all the answers, but it does provide an insight into where traffic comes from and how visitors behave when on-site. From this, you can understand what is working well and learn which areas need to be improved upon.

5 Step Beginners Guide to Starting a Website

How to Make a Website in 2021 ~ A Complete Guide for Beginners

If you want to create a website but have no idea how to start, you’ve come to the right place. Before you start building your site, there are five essential steps you need to go through – if you don’t, you may face serious problems further down the line. In this post, we’ll look at each of the steps and show you what you need to do so that any issues can be avoided.

1. You’ll need a website name

How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Insurance Agency Website

All website names are registered, so the first thing you’ll need to do is think of the name you want and check whether it is available to use. If it is, you’ll be able to register it and stop anyone else from using it.

Website names are technically known as domain names. They come in two parts, the name itself and the domain extension (.com, .co.uk, .org, etc.). You are free to use a wide range of extensions, though the best to use depends upon the type of website you are creating and, sometimes, the place you are located.

2. Decide how you want to build your website

10 Key Steps To Building A Great Small Business Website

There are multiple routes you can take to build a website. Here’s an overview of them:

a) Use an online website builder

No doubt you’ll have seen adverts on TV for services that let you create a website in just a few hours without any programming skills. While it is possible to do this, the drag and drop websites these services create are very limited in the functions they offer.

In addition, you may have to use a domain name that includes the website builders’ name, so instead of ‘mybusiness.co.uk’ you’ll have the less professionally sounding ‘mybusiness.webbuilder.co.uk’. The other downside is that you’ll have to use the web builder’s hosting and this may not provide best or cheapest service.

b) Use a CMS

Luckily, if you don’t have any coding skills, you are not restricted to using a website builder. Instead, you can do what the majority of website owners do and use a CMS (content management system) to create your website. The most popular, by far, is WordPress, which runs 29% of the world’s websites. Others include Magenta, Joomla and Drupal. All of them are completely free to use.

CMS are programs that let you build websites easily. Creating a web page is about as hard as creating a similar page on MS Word. It takes a little while to learn the software, but you don’t need to know anything about HTML or PHP coding.

CMS platforms enable you to use your own domain name and pick a web hosting package that offers the best services for your needs. They also have thousands of free web templates and plugins you can use to make your site look unique and to give it exceptional functionality.

c) Get a website built for you

If you don’t have the time or the skills to build a website, the only other solution is to pay a developer to build one for you. The main advantage of this is that you’ll get a bespoke site that has all the features you want. However, it will be the most expensive option and you may end up being reliant on the developer to maintain the site over the long term.

3. Choose a web host

How to Choose a Web Host (15-Point Checklist) - DreamHost

In order to build a website or for it to be available on the internet, it will need to be hosted on a server. To do this, you will need to find a hosting service that will host your website for you.

Choosing the right web host is one of the most important decisions you will make when launching your new website. Here is a list of reasons why:

* The hardware used by a web host will affect the performance of your site. This, in turn, can affect how it performs on search engines and whether visitors will stay on your site.

* Hosting that provides robust security can protect your site from hacking and malware infection and help you stay compliant with data protection regulations.
Reliable hosting can ensure your site does not go offline and is always available.

* Good hosting will provide a range of essential features such as email, website backups, easy upgrades and site migration.

* Hosting that provides 24/7 technical support means that, should you have any kind of problem with your site, there will be an expert on hand to help you.

When looking for a host, you need to consider these things carefully.

4. Choosing the right hosting package

How to Choose the Best WordPress Hosting in 2021 (Compared)

Once you have decided on the right host, the next stage is to decide on the right hosting package. This can seem a complicated process as there is a wide range of hosting options available. At the less expensive end of the spectrum, you have shared hosting, dedicated WordPress hosting and some of the smaller VPS plans. If you have bigger hosting requirements, you may need a large VPS package, a dedicated server or cloud hosting.

The type of hosting you will need depends on the size of your website, the amount of traffic you expect to receive and whether you intend to run other applications on the server, besides your website.

5. Planning your site

How to Create a Website Plan

Before you get started with creating your website, the final stage is to plan your content. To do this, you should have a complete overview of all the pages you’ll need and all the functionality required for the website to achieve your aims (such as a checkout for eCommerce sites).

When planning your site, divide your content into clearly defined sections and subsections. This will ensure that everything is in the right place for your visitors to find things easily. If it helps, use standard website structures so that things are where visitors expect them to be.

Building your site

When all the above steps have been completed, it will be time to start building your site. How you do this will depend on the choices you have made along the way, so there is no single piece of advice we can give to all readers. If you choose a web builder, follow the instructions on their site. If you are using the services of a developer, make sure you have given them a complete list of all the pages and features you require. If you are building a WordPress site, check out our posts, Complete Guide to installing WordPress using cPanel followed by How to Configure WordPress Settings.

Conclusion

As you can see, getting a website off the ground requires you to consider a number of very important factors. Thinking these through, before commencing, can prevent complicated and long-term issues developing further down the line. Hopefully, this post and the posts it links to, will help you make more informed decisions.

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