Imagine this: you’re on a date with someone for the first time and everything goes wrong on your end. You were nervous, but your date was not forgiving and wasn’t interested in a second date. After this incident, you take every precaution not to let it happen again. We make mistakes, but it’s necessary to take the appropriate measures to prevent future mishaps.
Think of this same scenario in a business setting. Imagine your customers are not interested in giving your website or social network pages a second glance after their first impression. If there is an error in your marketing strategy, then you need to take the right measures to fix the problem. And that doesn’t mean playing a guessing game. Rather, you will use web analytics to collect and analyze data to reveal where your business stands with customers as well as what you can do to improve.
Web analytics can provide you with valuable insight on what your customers are interacting with the most and whether or not you’re meeting your online marketing objectives. This guide outlines the way your business can implement web analytics to measure your website’s performance.
Identify your business purpose and goals: Before you jump into data, you need to decide what you want to achieve from your website and social media pages. You cannot form a presence without a purpose. Your website needs to have key performance indicators (KPI) in order to define your business’s goals. You may want to see more user engagement on Facebook posts or more people signing up for a contest. It's acceptable to list multiple goals or change goals every month, but you need to set goals.
Next, you will analyze and measure your performance. There are multiple web analytics tools you can use for your business. Google Analytics is a popular tool to start with.
Analyze and Define Your Keyword Strategy: Your web analytics will indicate what your customers are saying about your business. Use your organic search traffic to point out which phrases and keywords are most popular in leading customers to your website. Take the extra step and analyze how users searching for a specific keyword perform on your website. In other words, are they staying or are they leaving? How long are they staying on your website? You can see these results through your SEO reports. This allows you to change your content and keywords accordingly.
Understand what your customers like: When you identify what your customers are saying you can understand them better as well. Use the data from your analytics on content and keyword performance to restructure your information. Your website should reveal the information that your customers wish to reach. Maybe they want to see more information about a specific product or maybe they would rather see fewer words and more visuals. Familiarize yourself with what your customers are suggesting then implement a new strategy for your site to generate better user experience.
Optimize your site for better page quality: Your analytics should help you understand which pages work better for your customers. You can use the Flow Visualization feature in Google Analytics to recognize which pages perform better than others. This allows you to decide which pages should be removed or updated. By changing your content and page structure to meet customer needs, your search engine results will improve and conversion rates will potentially increase on your website.
If you are running a business and you want to build your customer base, improve your website’s performance, and increase conversion rates, then you need to integrate web analytics into your marketing strategy. Understanding the many features your web analytics tools may offer will help you reassess and manage your website and social network accounts. Instead of guessing what your customers want from your business, seek what they want and deliver it properly.