Web Analytics are vital for any business as they provide a window into your web site to examine how well it is doing its job.
Every business should have a goal for its web site. It should define what actions you want visitors to your site to take - Complete a form, buy something, sign up for the newsletter etc.
Without clear goals, it’s difficult to objectively measure and monitor how it is performing.
Once you have a goal, you can use web analytics tools such as Google Analytics to identify those pages that are having the biggest negative impact on the total number of people “converting,” or achieving that goal.
For example common reports to look at include :-
Top Landing Pages – Examine how well your entrance pages are working. What happens when visitors arrive at the site - do they click through to more content, or just ‘bounce’ off? Pages with high bounce rates could be losing you valuable visitors.
Goal Visualization – If you have a shopping cart on your site, then visitors need to go through a number of defined steps to make their purchase, which is the goal. By monitoring those key steps using Goal or Funnel Visualization, Google Analytics will show you where people leave or abandon the buying process.
Exit Pages – everyone will leave your site, but where are they doing it? If some of the important sales pages have high exit rates then that could spotlight an issue.
By identifying potential problems using Web Analytics, a process of page optimisation and improvement can be instigated to improve performance and Return on Investment.
Web analytics will also give you an immense amount important visitor data to help you assess the effectiveness of your online and offline marketing campaigns, but that’s for another post.
If you would like more information on how Web Analytics can help your business, contact us today for a FREE consultation.
