Google Analytics: A Guide For Your Online Business
Google Analytics is a free in-browser app that helps you understand how your website is performing. It goes well beyond counting hits. If you have an online business, you can learn how visitors move through your pages on their way towards making a purchase — or navigating away. The idea is to make make smarter, data-based decisions to improve your customers’ experience. In this guide, we’ll run through the basics of getting started with Google Analytics and look at all the essential features. Why analytics? Website analytics help you understand what people are doing in your online space — what they like, what they don’t like, what makes them click. The aim might be to offer a better experience for visitors and increase engagement. You can use the data to improve your site in a way that keeps visitors coming back for more. For online businesses, the goal will be to drive sales and deliver the best possible bang-per-buck. By tracking metrics like conversion rates, time on page, and click-through rates, companies can make informed decisions to boost sales, increase brand awareness, and hit their targets. In short: you’ll want analytics to achieve the best Return On Investment (ROI). Welcome to Google Analytics 4 Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a powerful in-browser platform for gathering traffic insights and more. It is the successor to Google’s previous tool, Universal Analytics (UA). They decided to bring back the classic name with this release, but the software is new from the ground up. GA4 represents a big leap for website analytics. In particular, it’s much smarter when it comes to looking at user interaction with individual web pages. You can track how visitors scroll up and down pages and understand more about which pages take customer where. And it’s totally free to use. There is a premium version, Google Analytics 360, but that’s designed for large enterprise with more complex data needs. GA4 is more than enough for most small to medium-sized businesses. How does Google Analytics work? GA4 gathers data from your website, your visitors, and Google Search. It then visualises the data in intuitive ways. It paints a vivid picture of how users engage with your site, with insights into their journey, from the moment they land on your page to the moment they leave (or, hopefully, make a purchase). GA4 makes use of what Google calls ‘Signals’ – clues taken from device type, browser settings, and so on – to enrich data collection. Doing it this way, combined with machine learning, allows GA4 to fill in data gaps (think of it like gaps in the dinosaur DNA). The idea is to understand the whole user experience. It sets out to do this through ‘event-based tracking’, including various user actions — from clicks and scrolls to video views and form submissions. Importantly, it collects data without infringing on the privacy of individual users. Instead, it’s anonymised and built up a bit like a collage. Users aren’t snooped on directly. GA4 can however collect more specific personal data when it comes to Ads Personalisation. By default, though, this option is set to off within everyone’s Google accounts. What can I do with Google Analytics? Imagine your business is an independent bookstore that sells books online. Google Analytics can track how customers find their online shop through search. It can provide data on which genres or authors they browse. You can see how long visitors linger, for example, on book descriptions, and if they add any titles to their virtual cart. You can see how customers have discovered books — through blogs, online ads, social media posts, or simply from search results. Armed with this information, you can figure out which marketing strategies are turning pages into profits and tailor the approach accordingly. Perhaps you need to highlight more staff picks on the homepage? Or run a special promotion? The data is there to help you make smarter decisions — whether that’s redesigning the website navigation, promoting specific products, or launching a campaign. You can track the progress of promotions or campaigns as you go. How do I install Google Analytics? Since GA is a web-based tool, you can access it directly in your browser without downloading or installing anything — it’s just about getting it connected. To start, you’ll need to open an account. You can use your existing Google account, if you like. Then, it’s time to create a Property. In Google Analytics, a Property represents an individual website or mobile app, and acts as a tab for organising all the information contained within it. You can create and manage multiple within one account. After logging into GA4, you’ll automatically get a Property created for your website or app as part of the initial setup. The final element is your unique Tracking Code. This code allows Google Analytics to collect data from your site and is provided as an HTML snippet (looking like “G-XXXXXXXXX” or “UA-XXXXX-X”). This invisible tracker will need to go on all pages in order to work its magic. Click here to visit Google’s own instructions on getting your site connected. Thankfully, if you’re using Website Builder from 123 Reg, there’s an easy way to add your HTML snippet. Simply visit your website dashboard and click “Edit Website”. Once in, scroll over to “Settings” in the right side panel and find “Google Analytics”. Copy paste your code into the “Tracking ID” area. Hey presto. Your changes will save automatically, but you’ll need to publish your website to make the Google Analytics tracking code active. Once that’s done, be patient! It can take up to 24 hours for data to start showing up in your GA4 account. If you’re a WordPress user, you can add your tracking code either manually by editing your theme’s header.php file or with various free plugins. Set up a Google Analytics demo account For those new to Google Analytics, a new account linked to your Google account is
Impact your business and join us for the Festival of Female Entrepreneurs
On Thursday 22nd October, 123-reg will be one of four headline sponsors of the annual Festival for Female Entrepreneurs, held at Colston Hall in Bristol. The event, run and managed by our good friends at Enterprise Nation, will play host to a day of information, education and inspiration that will help SMEs take their business to the next level. What is the Festival of Female Entrepreneurs? The event, run and managed by our good friends at Enterprise Nation, will play host to a day of information, education and inspiration that will help SMEs take their business to the next level. The Festival of Female Entrepreneurs takes place at Colston Hall in Bristol on Thursday 22 October. Access to the exhibition and networking space is completely free. Access to the networking area is £20, which will give you access to keynote talks and practical workshops from the UK’s leading female entrepreneurs and experts. There are only 250 tickets available for the keynotes and workshops so be sure to bag yours before they run out! Harnessing entrepreneurial spirit 123-reg is very proud to support the festival, especially when considering the growing numbers of females involved in start-ups in the UK. A report by the Office for National Statistics showed the number of self-employed women has increased by 34 per cent since 2009. By way of comparison over the past five years, the number of self-employed men has risen by just 15 per cent. Enterprise Nation’s 2014 Home Business Report found that of the 2.9 million homepreneurs in the UK, 64 per cent of them were women – equating to around 1.7 million women running businesses from home, contributing an estimated £180 billion to the British economy alone. What we have on offer The event which will be packed full of educative content aimed directly at SMEs will see 123-reg CMO, Kate Cox, deliver her top tips on how to start small businesses online. Additionally 123-reg SEO specialist, Roxana Stingu, will deliver a 30-minute workshop on the basics of SEO and the top tips for how small businesses looking to increase their rankings online. Additionally, 123-reg will have a presence at the event and will be on hand to help businesses get the answers they need to improve their online presence. For those that attend the event, we will be offering a free .com domain name with a free WordPress hosting or Website Builder package. The event has grown to become a mainstay of the South West’s business event landscape. Last year the event attracted over 700 attendees. For more information and to book your tickets, simply head to https://www.enterprisenation.com/festival So whether you have just set up your business or are looking for inspiration, the Festival of Female Entrepreneurs will have something for you. We look forward to meeting you! Join the social conversation using #FFE15
Did you know Google Analytics can do this?
What’s the point of promoting your products online if you can’t track the results and see if your strategy is working? Analytics software is a must-have for any respectable business that doesn’t assume their business is successful just by counting the number of visitors with a counter. As a business, you need to understand the visitor’s behaviour and, based on that, find new ways to reach them and grow your business. Google Analytics is Google’s popular free analytics tool that allows you to access both general and in-depth statistics on your site. Many use it to get basic details on how many visitors they’re getting but there’s a lot more to it than that. So, here are Google Analytics’ less known features that could tell you a bit more about your site’s visitors, hopefully some apply to your site. See what your visitors are searching for on your site This is different from the visitors’ search queries visitors on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. This time we’re focusing on the words visitors enter directly into your site’s search box. While most businesses are interested in the keywords people are searching on the web to get to their site, looking at what they’re searching inside your site is just as important. Why it’s good: You can see exactly what a visitor is searching for on your site and also on what page he was on when he made the search. As well as the search results you will also see what page the visitor chose from the results. How to set up site search: Go to your Google Analytics standard reports Click on the “Admin” button in the top right Click on “Profile Settings” Go to the bottom where you’ll find “Site Search Settings” Select “Do Track site Search” See who’s downloading your e-books Google Analytics has a great feature that allows you to see statistics on document downloads or other links. You simply need to add a small piece of JavaScript to the link you want to track and Google will track it for you. Why it’s good: This is perfect if you’re publishing an e-book, a report or any other document and want to see how many visitors have clicked on it and downloaded it. You can also use this feature to test the links from a specific page and see which one gets more clicks. How to set up it up: You simply need to add a small piece of JavaScript to the link you want to track and Google will then gather the data for you. Export your Analytics reports This feature will save you a lot of time as it allows you to export the data from your Analytics account to a CSV file and then open it with Excel. You can also export it in a PDF format. Why it’s good: Say you need to send a report to your marketing department but not everyone has access to the Google Analytics account. So, the easiest way to show them some stats is to export the report they’re interesting in seeing and then send it via email. How to export a report: Open the report you want to export and click Export; then select the format in which you’d like to export the file: PDF, CSV, CSV for Excel or TSV. Filter yourself out Every company out there should use this feature if they want to get accurate statistics. By setting up this filter, you’re telling Google to remove all traffic coming from your company network. If you’re also collaborating with an agency outside your company network, filter them out too to ensure their visits do not inflate your real stats. Why it’s good: It helps to get accurate statistics on your visitors by excluding traffic from your company’s employees and outside collaborators. How to set up a filter: Go here for step-by-step instructions on how to set up a filter. What other interesting features are you using to get insights on your site’s visitors?
Will Google answer the ROI of Social Media?
It’s a question still asked in board rooms, on conference calls and in face-to-face meetings probably a thousand times a day. What is the ROI of Social Media? Google as ever love to listen and offer solutions and it’s aim is to answer that question with the latest update to Google Analytics. The nature of social media makes it difficult to really quantify where or when sales funnels begin and what exactly social media is responsible for, but with the new set of social reports within the much trusted Google Analytics system Google claims to “bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about”. The ‘Social Report’ as Google label it, should help you identify the full value of traffic from social sites and measure direct conversions and also their impact on future conversions. The official Google Analytics blog has a good introduction to the new features. What is particularly helpful is the analysis of shares, via Twitter, Google +, etc which is often a strong indicator of how well your content is being pushed out and your reach is being extended beyond just your own following. It is far from perfect, but for free this latest tweak by Google Analytics goes a long way towards catching up the with Web 2.0 world it has never really been able to serve. The ability to track downloads of MP3 fileslike podcasts is still awaited, but at least now you are able to track more readily in a single place, who is ‘sharing’ your content and promotions.
Twitter’s Free Analytics
Do you know how much traffic Twitter is bringing to your site? Wouldn’t you like to get in-depth information on how your content is being shared across Twitter? With Twitter’s new Web Analytics tool you can measure the amount of traffic that Twitter is sending to your site and see exactly which type of content your followers enjoy more. This is actually a useful tool to measure the effectiveness of not only your Twitter campaigns, but your overall activity on this social network. It is not available for all Twitter accounts but comes as part of the Twitter for Business package, with analytics provided for both promoted (paid for) activity and free activity. The Twitter Web Analytics tool is powered by BackType, a social analytics company acquired by Twitter a few months ago, so it was only normal that it would be put to good use. Fortunately. the tool, currently in beta, is free to use and every site owner with a Twitter account will get the chance to test it out in a few weeks. What does Twitter’s Analytics tool bring to the table? According to their official blog entry there are three main benefits of using this tool. Once you use Twitter’s Web Analytics tool you should get a better understanding of: How much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network You will see in detail how much of your site content is being shared across Twitter. You will get more insights on the number of tweets and those of click-throughs to your site. Unlike Google Analytics, which most of us are using to get some of this information, with Twitter’s Analytics tool you can also see the path that the user took to get to your site. You’ll get to see how and who is sharing your content across Twitter. The amount of traffic Twitter sends to your site This is the kind of information you can currently find using Google Analytics, but it was only normal to have access to it using this tool. How effective your Tweet Button integration is This is also something you can currently do with several website plug-ins but it would be interesting to see how much in-depth information will Twitter’s Analytics tool be showing us. Why you need Twitter Web Analytics Well, that’s obvious – we’re all using Twitter but we still know little about how effective our marketing efforts are. This is a tool that can help all marketers determine what they’re doing right, what type of strategies generate results and which ones need to be improved.
6 tips on lowering bounce
If you are not up on the lingo, bounce-rate refers to the percentage of visitors that leave a site directly from a specific page. It may sound complicated, but with a simple free analytics tool and following these 6 tips you can soon be understanding it and addressing any high bounce-rate pages with success. 1. Don’t cheat on Keywords You might think it is clever to use high-traffic keywords but if the traffic you drive to your site has no relation to what they were searching for, what’s the point. You will only serve to frustrate and see those visitors leave straight away. 2. Get your design right When people click through to your site they want to know 1) they can trust you 2) that they will find what they were looking for 3) that they will enjoy their visit. If your site looks disorganised or is in garish colours your first impression will be all wrong and the click through will be wasted – more importantly if they arrive via a PPC campaign, your investment will have been wasted. 3. Optimize your page load Just as the look of your design is important, so is the back end of that page. If your page is cluttered with code and tracking links that take ages to load, you may lose your visitor before they even have a chance to read what you have to say. 4. Get the content right The written word is a powerful tool if used correctly. Not only can it grab the attention of your visitors when they first open up the page but you should also make sure you are using the headers and tags correctly so that the correct text is being displayed in search engines after their robots have trawled and listed your page. 5. Get link-building In the era of social networking there is no excuse not to have a wide-range of good links pointing to your pages. Link them to specific anchor txt and you can lure in targetted traffic too, which is much less likely to bounce once on your site. 6. Use analytics to improve your pages Google Analytics is one of thousands of website tools that allows you to examine bounce-rates. Make sure you have an account ser-up and relevant code on every page. Highlight what pages in your site have the highest bounce rate and then analyse why. Google Analytics for example allows to you rank per average time on the site, the other pages visitors viewed and also how they arrived at your site / page. Patterns are usually easy to spot. Perhaps an old listing on a well-used web forum, or maybe a coding issue on a specific page. A few tweaks and you could soon be lowering your bounce rate.
How to check the pulse of your marketing efforts in just 10 Minutes
Time: We’re always complaining we don’t have enough time to get things done. However, as a marketer no day should go by without getting up to date with your website analytics. Results matter so you have to check and see if your marketing efforts are paying off. This article covers a few simple steps you should follow at least once a week so you can stay up to date with your site’s metrics. This is what you have to check: Traffic Traffic should be the first thing on your list. No matter the type of website you own/run getting traffic to your site is as important as air. And you don’t want to run out of air, do you? When you check to see what your site’s traffic looks like, focus mainly on the number of visitors – unique as well as returning. Try to find out from this data what drove visitors to your site in a certain period of time or at a peak – maybe you ran a marketing campaign, sent an e-mail newsletter or ran a special offer. If your traffic was lower compared to a previous month, try to determine the factors that lead to a decrease – were there holidays, for instance, that could influence it? Conversions How is your site performing in terms of conversions? You can have a huge amount of traffic but if your visitors don’t convert, it means you’re doing something wrong. Check to see your call-to-actions, special offers or anything that would convince the visitor to convert. Take a closer look at the pages with low conversion rates and figure out how to include more opportunities for your visitors that they wouldn’t want to miss out on. Obviously, check the copy too as there might be something missing there. Sources Take a look at the organic searches, marketing campaigns, social media traffic, direct traffic and see if there’s a trend that catches your attention. What about the referral traffic? Anything interesting there? Use the inbound links to see if maybe there’s a linking opportunity there – maybe offer to write a guest post to generate more traffic to your site. If your blog posts are also generating traffic, check to see which ones are the most engaging and create more topics around that type of content. Keywords Analyze the keywords and see which ones have converted better. On the other hand, don’t neglect those keywords with low conversion rates because often these are opportunities you need to explore more. Write down these keywords and remember to use them in future content and blog posts. For an even better positioning, try to avoid general keywords and instead go with long-tail variations that are more specific to your business. ROI You are investing time and money in to your website, but are you generating sales to provide a return on that investment? See how you can reduce costs where possible. As a conclusion, don’t just analyse. Review those stats but also write down some actions that need to be taken in order to constantly improve your marketing efforts. How often do you review your site’s metrics? What metrics do you consider to be the most relevant?