Website analytics are the cornerstone of any data-driven marketing efforts. They are the key to understanding the impact of any website or marketing changes you make. Without analytics in place you are making decisions with limited information.
If sales numbers are your only metric, you won't be able to diagnose problems that come before the sale. For example a lack of sales could suggest a conversion problem or it could be that nobody is visiting your site. At the most basic level your website analytics can tell you how many people are visiting your site. But it can also let you know how they got there and what they do once they arrive.
Introducing Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools for collecting website analytics. You add a snippet of code to your site and it sits quietly in the background collecting data. It then pushes your data to a private online dashboard or apps that can help you understand your results.
With a few days of data collection you can start to learn things like:
- How many people are visiting your site.
- How long people are spending there.
- How many people come back to your site.
- Which pages of your site people are visiting.
- Which pages they visit before buying something.
- Which other sites are sending people to you.
- Which marketing mediums are working (i.e. Social Media, Email, Pay Per Click Advertising, etc)
This is just a small sample of the data you'll start to learn. Google Analytics literally tracks hundreds of metrics on your behalf. You can then start combining this data to build a very broad picture about what is working or failing for you. And most importantly you can use the data to decide how to focus and improve your digital marketing.
How to Get Started With Website Analytics
You can get started with Google Analytics for free and learn more about analytics through the analytics academy. But if you'd rather have it all set up and configured for you by a certified professional; check out our Data Driven Marketing Quickstart Package here.