When it comes to Google Analytics (GA), the phrase ‘Too much information’ often rings true. With so much data at your fingertips, it’s difficult to know where to focus.
In this article, we offer five simple GA insights that will fuel your digital marketing efforts and get your business noticed online.
Table of Contents
1. User Origin
Whether users have typed your URL into the address bar or found you through a search engine, traffic can arrive at your website in a number of ways.
The ‘Acquisition’ tab gives a number of reports showing just that. It allows you to answer questions such as:
- What proportion of traffic comes through organic search?
- Is Pay-per-Click traffic dominating the stats?
- How well is social media driving traffic to the website?
- Are those backlinks actually bringing new visitors to the site?
With this knowledge in mind, you can decide to double down on success stories or bolster underperforming channels, safe in the knowledge of why you’re doing it and what you hope to achieve.
2. User Demographics
GA provides detailed demographic information about your audience in the ‘User attributes’ tab.
This includes:
- Geographic origin. Do your users originate in the country you do business in or are they coming from abroad? Analysing the geographic origin of users will help you to understand how ‘useful’ your traffic is and might identify new areas or regions to target.
- Age cohorts. By understanding the age of your audience, you can tailor the content appropriately. Every generation has a specific way of communicating; you will have a much greater impact if you speak the right language.
- Gender: This is particularly useful if your target audience is of a specific gender, such as if you sell male hair care products.
Use this information to assess whether your website is reaching the right customers and shape your content appropriately.
3. On-site Engagement
The Engagement tab provides data on how visitors are interacting with your website.
At its most basic level, it tells you which pages receive the most traffic, either as a landing page (the first page the user encounters) or otherwise.
Engagement time is also essential here. While the number of users might at first glance suggest a high-performing page, if the engagement time is low – under twenty seconds, say – then the page likely isn’t working for the users.
What determines a ‘good’ engagement time depends on the type of content. In general, it averages between two and five minutes, with a breakdown below:
- Retail: 2-3 minutes
- B2B: 2-4 minutes
- Media: 3-5 minutes
- Blogs: 1-2 minutes
4. Conversion Tracking
Conversions (or ‘Key Events’ as they are now called in Google Analytics 4) are the actions you want users to take on your site, such as completing a purchase, signing up for a newsletter or filling out a contact form.
They determine the success of the web page; they are the page’s ultimate goal.
GA allows you to set up and track these goals, helping you to monitor conversions accurately. This is invaluable for measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. If a campaign is not yielding enough conversions, you can likely conclude that it is underperforming and make adjustments.
To set up a Key Event in GA, head to Admin > Data Settings > Key Events, then hit the “Create Event” button.
Give the Key Event a name then follow the on-screen menu to set the event parameters.
5. Purchase and Checkout Journeys
There’s nothing more frustrating than promising customers dropping out of a purchase at the checkout.
Fortunately, GA provides reports that show when in the purchasing process the user dropped out.
Did they find the product page confusing and click away?
Did they lack trust in the checkout process and drop off when asked for credit card details?
By inferring this information from GA, you can begin to understand where your purchase and checkout processes need refinement, adjust as necessary and bring the sales home.
Google Analytics Insights: Final Thoughts
Google Analytics is a treasure trove of information regarding the online success of your business. It’s also a continual source of FOMO if you don’t know how to use it.
By understanding traffic sources and user information, as well as how users interact with your website, you can identify your online strengths and weaknesses and use this information to fuel your digital marketing strategy.
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