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Understanding Google Analytics: Key Metrics

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Do you know who people visits your website every day and where they come from? Wondering who your target audience is in the digital space or what their online behavior might be? Are your advertising programs such as social media marketing or SEO producing the right results?

Access to this data can provide valuable insights to improve your digital marketing campaigns, products and overall customer experience. But how do you access it? The answer is through Google Analytics.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a web analytics service that provides valuable information about your website traffic and target audience. The service uses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to provide insights that help businesses formulate their digital marketing campaigns, and reach the right customers.

Whether you have a WordPress, ecommerce or custom website, Google Analytics is one of the most crucial digital marketing tools for businesses today. It analyzes your website’s performance and conversions to help you determine whether your current strategies are working. For your business to thrive, you need to utilize this tool by understanding which metrics to focus on.

Key Google Analytics Reporting Metrics

As an entrepreneur, business owner or marketer, you don’t need to dive into all the technical details of Google Analytics. All you need to understand is the essential metrics your business needs to boost traffic, increase conversions, and enhance the customer experience.

The four essential metrics are:

  • Audience
  • Acquisition
  • Behavior
  • Conversion

Below is a breakdown of each parameter and how measuring it can make the difference for your business.

1. Audience

Audience, in this case, refers to several factors as it relates to the visitors on your site. Some key metrics:

  • Location: Visitors from Country, State, City, etc.
  • Devices: Indicates if visitors use a desktop computers or mobile devices to view your site.
  • New or Returning Visitors

audienceMonitoring these stats helps identify your audience and uncover areas of opportunity or new markets.

Audience information can help you tweak you personalize your site layout and content, adjust the responsiveness, and help increase returning site users.

Business Application:

Metric: Audience > Mobile > Devices
Majority of visitors view your site from a mobile device versus a tablet or desktop.

Opportunity:
Optimize your site for mobile viewing with larger text and buttons for easy navigation. Ensure it is mobile friendly and responsive.

2. Acquisition

Where does the traffic on your website come from? Organic search (searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) is the largest source of web traffic on most sites today. According to research, Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. However, search engine queries aren’t the only source of web traffic.

Other sources include the following:

  • Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Quora, etc)
  • Referrals (visits from another website that links to yours)
  • Direct traffic (someone types in your URL into the browser or an unidentified source)
  • Paid search (Google AdWords)

With this information, you’re able to capitalize on sources that generate the most traffic and boost those that receive heavy marketing but generate low traffic.
 acquisitionIn the example above, you’ll notice approx. 62% of traffic is arriving from organic search. This is a strong indication that your SEO strategy is working well.

Business Application:

Metric: Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels
Low traffic from organic search

Opportunity:
Optimize your content for search engines by working on a keyword strategy, boosting your site layout, and adding meta descriptions. Reach out to the WSI Team for help with ranking better in search results.

3. Behavior

Behavior reporting refers to what users do when they visit your site. The pages they visit, the average visit duration and the bounce rate (single page visits). What are your most popular pages? How long are users viewing each page? Are users leaving after viewing only one webpage?

Understanding user behavior gives insight into how to improve the customer experience and provide valuable content. If users navigate multiple pages or experience longer sessions, it means they find the site useful and find value in your content.

behaviorUnderstanding the Avg. Time on Page can help determine if users found the information they need.

Business Application:

Metric: Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
Page content with the least amount of pageviews

Opportunity:
Rewrite the content to bring the page more focus and increase overall interest. Create headers with keywords, section content and incorporate bullet points.

4. Conversion

The ultimate goal of any marketing strategy is to provide value to your customers and help them with their needs.  Customers who complete certain actions indicates they are searching for additional information could be converted down the pipeline. This conversion typically has a specific call-to-action. It could be to subscribe to your newsletter, download an ebook PDF or buy a product from your e-commerce website.

You can track your conversions thru Google Analytics:

  • Form conversions, e.g., sign-up forms and contact forms
  • Products added to cart
  • Completed purchases or materials downloaded 
  • Articles read or video played

Different businesses have different conversion goals. Google Analytics allows you to track goals specific to your marketing objectives. It ultimately gives insight into how to push leads further down the funnel.

google_analytics_wsi_conversionIn this example, 745 users completed the goal of scheduling an appointment.
Image Credit: https://www.searchenginejournal.com

Business Application:

Metric: Conversions > Goals > Goal URLs
Noted drop in month over month goal completions for the ebook download

Opportunity:
Increase downloads through urgency or refresh messaging around the value of the ebook.

Ready to Get Started with Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a must-have analytics tool for every business owner, marketer, or entrepreneur who wishes to attain success in the digital space. Let WSI Connect provide insight into your audience, traffic acquisition, conversions, and user behavior. The information will help build a solid marketing strategy that will increase leads and conversions, and boost ROI.

Contact WSI Connect for help with Google Analytics

Directly From Google: How to Hire an SEO

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This video was published Feb 14, 2017 and is still one of the most helpful pieces of guidance for businesses looking for help with their SEO efforts.

In this 11:37 minute video, Maile Ohye, Google’s Developer Programs Tech Lead, defines a clear process to follow when hiring an SEO agency.

Maile provides a clear explanation about what SEO is and how it should fit into a business’ overall marketing strategy.

At WSI Connect we follow the same process that Maile recommends when evaluating an SEO agency. Here is the summary of her recommended process:

  1. Conduct a 2-way interview with your potential SEO. Check that they seem genially interested in you and your business.
  2. Check their references.
  3. Ask for (and you’ll probably have to pay for) a technical and search audit.
  4. Decide if you want to hire.

This happens to be the same core process that we’ve followed with our clients since inception.

If you are interested in learning more about how we can help your business develop and implement a clear digital marketing strategy, reach out to schedule a discovery call.

Discovery Call

Google Analytics has the inside scoop on your customers

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Google Analytics is an excellent tool that will help website owners and managers monitor all aspects of their sites. Who is visiting? Which pages are they visiting and for how long?  How did they get to your site and what type of device are they using? The answers to these questions can add up to some pretty valuable information for business owners. Small business owners, in particular, can make a noticeable difference in their level of success just by using the information Google provides to make small tweaks to their site.

Google Analytics reporting benefits:

Audience – Age? Gender? Desktop or tablet? Geographic location?

Acquisitions – Organic search or referral link? Which websites?

Behavior – Which pages? How many views? How long on each page?

Conversion – Are people doing what you want them to on your site?

Audience reporting Audience reporting can give you a peek into the demographics of your customers. How old are they? Are they male or female? What language do they speak and what country are they from? Also, audience reporting can show whether site visitors are new or returning. Are they using a desktop computer or a tablet? All these details are important. If you are getting considerable activity from a city where you don’t have a presence, you might consider opening a new location or just making your services accessible to people in those areas. If a significant amount of your traffic is coming from a tablet or other mobile device, you will want to be sure that your site content is mobile-compatible or you could end up causing your customers to be frustrated and even drive potential customers away.   

Acquisition reporting Through Acquisition reporting, one can learn how people are getting to their site. Did they do an organic search for your site? Did they click on a direct link or a referral link from another site? Did they reach you from a social network like Facebook, Yelp or Google+? Which search words are they using to get to your site? You can also link your Google AdWords account to Google Analytics so you can monitor how well your AdWords campaigns are performing.

Behavior reporting Through Behavior reports, you get a peek into what pages the site visitors are visiting. This will help you to know if you are providing valuable content that is meaningful your audience. If users click on your pages only to quickly leave them, perhaps you need to review your content and make sure that it is current and relevant. If a particular page gets a good deal of traffic, you’ll want to capitalize on that by focusing more on that type of page or adding elements to that page to help customers move toward conversion. Conversion reporting This leads us to the Conversion Rate. If you are selling products and someone places an order, this is called a macro conversion. However, there are often several smaller, micro conversions that can take place along the way (contact forms, mailing address sign-ups, blog subscription, etc. Focusing on the micro conversions can help you move customers along through the process to the ultimate goal of the macro conversion. In order to really understand the conversions on your site, you need to set Goals within Google Analytics by which you can measure your success.

Reference:http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/05/see-your-conversions-in-real-time.html

Time to act

Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you analyze and manage your business. It can be an incredibly valuable tool if you know just how to use it and use the information gleaned from it. Let WSI Connect help you help your business by implementing and maintaining analytics reporting through Google Analytics.

Web Analytics: Measuring value and growth

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Keep Tabs On Your Digital Campaigns

Due to the vast flow of information and the dawn of Big Data we’re becoming an increasingly analytical society. Whether it’s documenting the fuel efficiency of cars, counting Facebook likes, or managing personal finances, we’re always trying to determine the direct results of our actions and decisions.  Did you buy the best performing stock?  Do you have the cheapest smartphone plan?  How many miles per gallon does your car get?

All of these things require measurement, which isn’t a new concept despite the new tools and tracking methods available today. Businesses have always had budgets, financial reports and fiscal targets. Businesses use employee reviews to determine promotions, demotions and areas of need, as another method of measurement.

So why do so many businesses fail to track and measure their digital marketing campaigns? Some inside the industry might suggest that, “It’s easy, the data is all right there,” but the reality is much tougher than that. Plenty of businesses, especially smaller ones and those in niche markets, are having a hard enough time fully embracing digital marketing tactics.  This makes the idea of web analytics overwhelming – after all, if you don’t understand what a set of data is saying, the data itself is useless.

Understanding measurement by establishing a baseline

In order to adequately track and measure anything, you need to determine a baseline that can be used to compare the results of your tracking and measuring. For example, take your website’s traffic. If you are planning on implementing digital marketing tactics to increase the number of visitors to your website, you would want to know how many visitors your website is receiving prior to implementing your campaigns. If you obtain three months of data that shows you get roughly 50 hits a day on your website, you have then established a baseline of 50 visits. When you implement your digital marketing tactics, you’ll now be able to easily discern whether your campaigns are working by how many more visitors your website is getting. If it’s many more than 50, you know what you’re doing is working; if the difference is negligible, you need to make a tweak.

While the example of website visitors may seem simple, it highlights a critical error that many businesses are making when they delve into digital marketing: they forget to establish a baseline. When used correctly, measurement and the establishment of a baseline number from which you intended to improve is an extremely important (and often overlooked) function of your overall digital marketing plan.

The Digital Marketing and Measurement Model – The Key to Web Analytics

As outlined by Avinash Kaushik in his Digital Marketing and Measurement Model, the key to digital marketing success is the complete structural understanding of the purpose and intent of your campaigns. Once you understand how and why your business should implement certain campaigns, you need to know the exact results of those campaigns in order to understand how well they’re working and whether you should continue forward or make a change.

Here are the five steps you can use as a guideline for your own Digital Marketing and Measurement Model:

  • Business Objectives: this might seem simple, but you really have to be honest about why your business exists in order to get your Digital Marketing and Measurement Model off to a successful start. Once you know the why, then apply it to whatever campaigns you’re planning on running (website, social, content).
  • Goals for Objectives: the goals you define here will mark the pathway to completing the business objectives above. These goals will be the ‘how’ you successfully accomplish your ‘why?’
  • Performance Indicators: performance indicators are metrics (data!) that help you understand how well your goals are working towards accomplishing your objectives.
  • Targets: much like a baseline, the purpose of setting targets for your campaign is so that you can determine your success (or failure) and act accordingly. If you do not set targets you’ll have no idea what the results of your campaigns mean.
  • Analysis: decide which objectives, goals and targets are the most valuable to the company and take a close look at the numbers. Are you satisfied with the results? Are the campaigns working? A close analysis of everything you’ve done thus far will help you understand how well your campaigns are working and what you can do to improve performance.

This is just a brief framework from which you can build your own Digital Marketing and Measurement Model. The most important aspect of this model is that one concept builds on the next and the whole thing works cohesively. To function correctly, businesses must truly understand their purposes and honestly define their objectives, goals and targets.

The Aftermath – What You Should Do Next

The actions you take after developing a Digital Marketing and Measurement Model are vital to its success – you can’t just sit back and hope it works. This is a measurement model we’re talking about!

Here are a few things you can do to ensure your model’s continued success:

    • Revisit: web analytics never ever involves setting and forgetting. You need to revisit your model – not every day or even every week, but it needs your attention and analysis once in a while.
    • Adapt: as with most aspects of the digital world, your ability to adapt will define your level of success. Your Digital Marketing and Measurement Model might need to change year-to-year, so the sooner you understand and embrace the ever-changing nature of the Internet, the better.
    • Automate: web analytics is work, but the good news is you can automate some of it to relieve the day-to-day pressure. Take advantage of your analytics provider’s many options and have reports sent to your inbox and set alerts to receive immediate updates when performance indicators reach or drop to certain levels.

The Digital Marketing and Measurement Model is only one aspect of web analytics. For more information or guidance on how to further delve into the world of web analytics contact WSI Connect.

Social Media for Professionals: LinkedIn and Google+

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Social media has become an integral part of the personnel sourcing and job hunting process. Today, more and more companies rely on the Internet to research the candidates (including outside consultants) they plan to hire.  This makes it important to take a strategic approach when it comes to building your online reputation. Effectively leveraged, social media can help you create a strong personal brand and widen your reach across a wide array of job markets, industries, and organizations.

While there are many social media platforms that can help you build your network, there are two that all professionals should definitely consider and keep up to date – Google+ and LinkedIn. While the latter has now become synonymous with job search / hiring, the former can help you establish a strong online presence that you can leverage to enhance your reach. These two platforms alone can help you build a relevant network, and create and exchange information and ideas to give shape to your personal brand as a professional.

Linking Via LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become the most popular professional network in most parts of the world. Clearly, it has several advantages over traditional job portals thanks to its social media strengths and the fact that it is primarily driven by quality content.

  • LinkedIn allows its members to connect with each other. You can connect with like-minded individuals from the same profession and explore available job opportunities through this network.
  • It is a handy research tool. Most companies worth their name are present on LinkedIn with specialized digital marketing teams continuously generating content or strategizing to make their presence felt online. You can utilize this content along with inputs from your network to research a potential employer and their business before an interview.
  • You can identify the people that matter. Within minutes, LinkedIn can offer you insights into who the key persons in your area of interest are at a company you want to work with—as an employee, as a vendor, as a business partner, and so on. You can connect and engage with them to explore the possibility of a potential opportunity in their company.
  • You can build credibility. Your profile provides details about the people in your professional network, the companies you have worked with, and the capabilities you bring to the table, among other factors. Features like endorsements and recommendations add even greater credibility to your profile. 

How To Make The Most Of LinkedIn?

  • Develop your LinkedIn profile like you would your resume. Highlight your strengths and capabilities early in your profile page.
  • Create interesting content and share it with your network. This will help establish you as a subject matter expert. The more original content you post the greater the benefits, including search engine rankings.
  • Build your network. Identify people within your industries of interest and connect with them. Join relevant groups and make your presence felt within these micro-networks.
  • Post regularly on various forums and comment on topics that can demonstrate your expertise and show that you have a unique perspective on matters of interest to your network.
  • Use the right keywords while building your profile and even while posting in forums. This will help both, your search engine rankings and your association with certain specific skills and capabilities.
  • Let’s connect Luke Middendorf – LinkedIn

Enhancing Your Online Presence With Google+

Where do we all go when we want to search for information?

Google. Where else? No other search engine today comes even close. A strong presence on Google+, is therefore, a definite advantage. However, as Google says, Google+ is now more than a social media platform. It has integrated various other offerings from the Google stable such as YouTube, Google+ Communities, Hangouts, Google Local and Reviews, Google Analytics, Google+ Ripples, and Google Mobile to provide a single window platform that can have a significant impact on your SEO.

How can you take advantage of Google+?

  • Build a profile page on Google+ to let Google know of your existence. While there is no stated preference, there is enough evidence to show that Google does favour content hosted on its products when throwing up search results.
  • Create backlinks to your blog, website, and LinkedIn pages using Google+. Also ensure that these links can be shared by those who visit your profile.
  • Upload content and make it shareable on Google+. The more shares you can manage the better it is in terms of SEO for your profile.
  • Build the right connections. The Circle function offered by Google+ helps segregate your contacts. This is a valuable tool you can use to employ targeted messaging and relevant communications.
  • Let’s connect Luke Middendorf on Google+, WSI Connect 0n Google+

Contact WSI Connect to help you plan and leverage social media for businesses.  WSI Connect is a digital marketing agency located in Concord, CA.  We service the San Francisco Bay area and help our clients grow their profits through strategies such as search engine optimization, online advertising, website optimization and social media.