Website Analytics

You don’t have to be a geek to understand that website analytics can help you market your business better, cheaper and more effectively. (Although it does help.)

A good website analytics package like Google Analytics (which is free, btw) can provide all kinds of valuable, actionable information.

1. It can tell you where the visitors to your website come from. That means you’ll get some real data on how many come from your social media marketing campaigns, how many come from email, organic search, direct or referral (i.e. other websites).
2. it can tell you what keywords your customers are using to find you. Among other things, that will help you decide what products and services you might want to consider offering that you don’t already offer.
3. It can tell you which pages from your website show up in the search engines. If that number isn’t the same as the number of pages you’ve got on your website, it’s an indication that the search engine might be having an issue crawling your website.
4. It can tell you what your website’s users look like in terms of age, gender, and interests. There is often a misconception of who’s buying from you. That is especially true if you offer the opportunity to book service appointments online. Who’s making the appointment? Is it different than the person dropping the vehicle off? That’s useful information.
5. It can tell you how often your customers come back to your website. That can help you understand how many visits it takes them to make a purchase decision, and that can help you decide whether you need to offer incentives to help them convert.

If you know the answers to all of these questions, you can stop reading now. If you’re having trouble answering any/all of them, you should keep reading.

Most of our clients don’t have Google Analytics or Google Search Console configured for their web sites, and they should. Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console are easy to set up and they’re both free. Most of our customers don’t even know these tools are available to them because their web developer didn’t mention it.

That’s a shame. That kind of data – who your customer is and how they found your web site – is one of those things that every business owner should pay attention to.