Look Under the Hood Using Google Analytics
Whether you work for a small business or a large enterprise, a website is the digital heart of any organization. It’s the place where individuals at various stages of the marketing funnel (from awareness all the way to purchase) come to learn more about an organization, research a new product or service, make a purchase or a donation, and much more. Therefore, it’s critical to ensure your website is fully optimized — and Google Analytics can help you do that.
A Website is the Digital Heart of Any Organization — Keep it Healthy.
With Google Analytics tracking code inserted on all pages of your website, stakeholders with access are able to take a look under the hood and see how various aspects of their organization’s website are performing — or underperforming. The wealth of data available when using Google Analytics paints a detailed picture of how users engage with a website, and provides insightful information for optimization opportunities (i.e. strategies to keep a website healthy).
Simple Best Practices for Using Google Analytics:
- Allow Advertising Features to unlock key demographic information about your website audience, including age, gender, and interests. This information can help you better understand your audience, and can help inform your marketing strategy.
- Enable Google Search Console to track organic queries driving site traffic. These queries provide insight into how users are finding your site and can also be used as keywords in future AdWords campaigns.
- Create a Custom Dashboard to regularly and easily view site metrics important to your organization, especially if you’re short on time.
Why Take a Look Under the Hood?
Investing time in analyzing your organization’s Google Analytics website data can certainly reap future rewards. With the data available, you can:
- Discover who your website users are (> Audience)
- Understand how users navigate your site (> Behavior > Behavioral Flow)
- Ensure your site’s top content is easily accessible (> Behavior > Site Content > All Pages)
- Track key site actions (> Conversions > Goals)
- Understand how users are accessing your website (> Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium)
- Understand where users land and exit (> Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages or Exit Pages)
- Track links to your website via other channels (through UTM tagging)
- And much more (trust me)
Looking for strategic guidance in leveraging Google Analytics data to improve your digital strategy? Get in touch! We’d love to help.