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A few weeks back we ran you through the process of setting up your own Google Analytics account for your business. Now that you are an expert on the set- up process, the Straight Up Digital Founder and resident Google Analytics guru, Chris Bindley is going to explain the way we use Google Analytics to measure how well your website is performing.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is free software that measures all the traffic that is interacting with your website and if used properly, can give instant feedback to who, when, where and what people are searching for on your website.

The key to a good website is customer engagement – driving traffic to your site and keeping them there is essential to your business’s success. But how exactly do we measure that? There are five key areas in Google Analytics that the team at Straight Up use to determine if your website is working for you the way it should be:

  1. Real Time
  2. Audience
  3. Acquisition
  4. Behaviour
  5. Conversion
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Real Time

This is exactly how it sounds, we can actually see who is on your site in “real time” at the very moment that we are looking at the analytics. It can track many different options, but the two main important ones are:

  • Overview – It will give you the information about “how” many people are on your website at that given time.
  • Traffic Sources – This will tell you “where” the people on your website are located.

Audience

This is an especially important tool as we are starting to get a deeper look into the data about target markets and who is engaging with your website. Again, there are many options here that you can search through but the two main options we use are:

  • Demographics – this gives us more information specifically about the customer characteristics, age and gender of your visitors. These details are important to know as they will better help you understand you target market.
  • Geo – This option will tell you exactly where on the planet your customers are visiting your website from. It will bring up a map of the globe and will show you from where your visitors are from.

Acquisition

There is a lot of information here, but the main area we look at is the All-Traffic option and within there we look at the:

  • Channels – It’s here that Google Analytics divides your visitors into segments of origin on your site.
    1. Direct – these are the people that have typed your web address directly into the address bar at the top of the page.
    2. Organic Search – people that are searching through a search engine to find you.
    3. Social Media – they have clicked a link either on Facebook, Insta etc and been directed to your site.
    4. Referrals – if you have links on other websites and people have clicked on them and been directed to your site. You may have partnerships or affiliations with other businesses and have your website link on their site.

We could use words like “Bounce Rate”, “Pages/Session” and “Average Session Duration” but really with this option you get to see what pages people are looking at on your website, for how long and if they looked at more than the initial page they clicked into.

Behaviour

The Behaviour page runs hand in hand with the Acquisition page, but gives you a more detailed report of all pages on your website. Here you will find data on your websites top –

  • Landing Pages – This will tell you the top pages on your website that people click into.
  • Exit Pages – This will tell you the pages that people tend to leave the site on, Contact Us page would be a good example as people find the details on who to contact and don’t need to search the site any further.

Conversions

This is a great tool for measuring goals set for Enquiry Pages or E Commerce pages. You can see exactly where the conversions came from and help you understand if a certain promotion or campaign worked better than another.

As you are now beginning to see, Google Analytics is a powerful tool for your website and business. Understanding the people that are visiting your site can give you instant feedback on your website’s effectiveness. It can also be used to help confirm your Target Market or make you think about a change of focus for your marketing strategy.

If you haven’t already set up a Google Analytics account, go back and watch The Straight Up Digital Blog on how to do so, and start changing your website’s effectiveness today. If you need any help with understanding Google Analytics more please don’t hesitate to call our team, we are more than happy to help!

About the Author: Matt White

matt

Matt is the king of content! He is responsible for many of our blogs, as well as all of our SEO content and content for client websites. Matt brings years of experience to the team – having run several businesses himself, as well as writing for major advertising clients and reviewing films for various publications, just to name a few. He brings some much needed balance to an office full of big personalities with his relaxed attitude and timely humour.

About Straight Up Digital

Straight Up Digital is a full service digital marketing agency based in Burleigh Heads, Gold Coast, Australia. We specialise in Web Design, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media, Paid Ads (AdWords & Facebook Ads), Email Campaigns and Video Marketing.

Straight Up by name. Straight Up by nature. We prefer to tell it how it is and we aren’t afraid of the difficult conversations with our clients. Our goal is to become the most transparent and results focused digital marketing company of the third millennium!

We have been helping businesses for over 10 years across a variety of industries including restaurants, real estate, construction, manufacturing, certified trades, professional services, podcasts and events.

Whilst based on the Gold Coast we service clients all over Australia and around the World. If you have any questions about your website, social media or lead generation please get in touch.

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