In the current age it is nearly impossible for any business owner to argue against the importance of having a website. After all, 80% of all transactions, regardless of whether they are made online or physically onsite, begin with a search on the web. Having worked with small business for a little more than a decade, what I have found interesting is that they have a website, but they aren’t utilizing it to its full potential. There is a wealth of very powerful analytics tools available today, many of which are completely free; however, business owners aren’t utilizing them to dive into their web analytics. Keeping track of your web metrics can give you very deep insight into who your customers are, and direction on how to position your products and services in the future to help realize higher sales while exerting less effort. The whole “work smarter, not harder” mentality can be achieved when you keep track of how customers are using your website. Here 5 insights an analytics tool can provide you that can result in a boon to your business.
People Are Visiting
Obviously, some people who become your customers have come from a visit to your website. As such, they have left you a profile via a web cookie. This can help you determine how many web users have visited your site, how many pages they typically visit, how long they stay on your site, and whether they are repeat visitors, or completely new. Many of these things can be helpful in determining measures and best practices you can implement to make your site work better. For instance, one of the things that an analytics tool provides you is bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a particular page, and immediately leave without engaging in any meaningful way. If a page has a high bounce rate, then you will know that the contents of the page aren’t attracting customers, and means that things need to be changed or optimized to better to bring about higher customer engagement.
What are They Viewing?
When your customers visit your site, which pages are they viewing? Analytics tools can tell you. They can also tell you how long users stay on a particular page. This can help you determine which of your products and services are important to them, which can be a big deal in terms of what components of your business you should focus on, what is in demand, and perhaps, which of them you should adjust, or actively market better.
Where Are They From?
Analytics tools can inform you of where your customers live, or at least where they were when they visited your site. You may make assumptions about your primary market areas, only to find out from your analytics tools that your main customer base is from somewhere entirely different. Finding out where your customers are from can really help target where your other advertising and marketing efforts should be spent, and where you can pull back in places your customers aren’t.
How Are They Getting To You?
If you are using other forms of media for advertising purposes and linking them to your site, it would be helpful to know that you are spending your money in the right place. Analytics tools allow you to see from which sources your web traffic is coming from. Maybe your Facebook ads aren’t bringing in the traffic you desired. It may be the ad isn’t optimized or compelling enough, it may be that your target isn’t utilizing Facebook at all. You would never really know this if you didn’t have the ability to track your web traffic. Analytics tools also help you know whether your customers are using a mobile device or a desktop to search you out. They also tell you which mobile devices your customers use, and which browsers they entered their search criteria in.
What Do They Look Like?
You are an expert at your business, and should certainly have an idea of who your customer is, whether they tend to be male, or female, and how old they are. Analytics tools can help you drill down to minute detail these things; furthermore, you have the ability to learn about their navigation behavior. As you analyze your web metrics, you may find that you carry a product 55-65 year old females are really interested in. You can see how this insight can help you craft additional marketing strategies and help you make decisions that can exploit this fact. Analytics tools also have the amazing ability to tell you what other things your customers are interested in. With one of my restaurant clients, we determined based on web analytics, that their customers are interested in travel, financial services, and gardening. This helps our agency determine what other media the restaurant should be placed in. For instance, gardening publications, local gardening blogs, travel and financial services sites are beneficial places to run a ads to get new restaurant customers.
In conclusion, analytics tools give you eyes into your business that you didn’t have before. After you have used them, you may find that beforehand running your business was like wearing a blindfold. It’s kind of like driving to your favorite get away spot the same way you have always gone, and visiting the same sites, only to find out, after you purchased a GPS, that there is much faster way to get there, a wealth of new places to go, and new things to do that you didn’t know of before.
Augment puts a massive amount of emphasis on web analytics when making decisions on behalf of our clients. As a result, we execute marketing initiatives that are targeted, use a marketing budget efficiently, and often result in impressive returns, and more sales.