Introduction

Google Analytics is a free online tool which will help us understand the user behaviour in our website.  It will show loads of data which will help us make decisions to improve the quality of our website. We may need to focus on reducing the possibilities of people leaving the website and therefore improve the effectiveness of the website. Google Analytics will show us the search query that people are typing to get into our website. Once if Google Analytics is linked to Search Console (one of the free tool by Google to check optimization and indexing status), it displays keywords. The search query of users can  can be referred to as keywords, we can target these keywords and run a search ad campaign and efforts of which can generate leads for the business.  To keep your business always in the top you may pay attention to the following key pointers. Neglecting the below could reflect badly on the business.

Key Analytics metrics which are must for online marketing strategy

1) Goal completion

If you have any specific objective in mind which you want your visitors to fulfil then it’s called as a goal in Google Analytics. These goals are prepared with an intention to get leads or conversions from the customers. Eg: “Thank you for registering with us” This is one goal.

2) Event completion

In case if you have a search button or a book now button or any call to action where you want to find out who has clicked on it. The usual motive behind this is to find out the number of enquiries that the customers are actually making in your website or how the visitor is actually interacting with the website.

3) Bounce Rate Status

The term bounce rate is a technical term used in Google Analytics. It refers to number of times the users leave the page without further interactions. More number of users leaving the page then higher will be the bounce rate. There are many reasons for leaving the web page. To name a few, the user may not find the content interesting or relevant, page errors, thin content, slow page loading and many more. You can reduce this by keeping your target audience engaged with interesting content. When they find your content interesting, there are more chances for further considerations and so does conversion

4) New & Returning Visitors compare to previous month

New visitors are those individuals who has visited your website from a particular device for the very first time. On a monthly basis, if more new visitors are coming to your website then it’s a sign that your brand is creating awareness in the minds of the public. If you have a constant returning of customers then probability of conversion is more.

5) The page which is getting more visitors

If you see that a particular page is getting more visitors than it is evident that the customers are actually liking the content of the page. Eg: if contact page is getting more views then it means that there is a scope for a lead.

6) The page which is getting more bounce rate

In case if you see page(s) with higher bounce rate then it means that the page(s) requires immediate attention.

7) City or country from where we get more traffic

This parameter helps us to understand from where we are getting traffic for our website. The origin of traffic depends on target audience for whom we are willing to cater.

8) The source which is generating more conversion

There are various channels of traffic which influence traffic into your website. Traffic channels are commonly classified as paid search, organic search, direct search, social and referral. If you can get more conversions in organic then there is no need to burn your money in paid search. Direct is when the user is able to get into your website through the address bar in the browser, then it is a direct traffic. Social is when you are able to get traffic through social media websites and referral is when you can get traffic through Yahoo, Bing, Baidu etc

If we are getting conversion from a particular source then accordingly it’s better to give more focus to it.

9) The particular day of the week which is getting more traffic

If the website is into a business of meat selling, they can be assured to get high traffic on weekends. As a business, it is important to see when we are getting more users and cater to it accordingly.

10) The particular day of the week which is getting the least traffic

In case if it’s a recruitment firm website, they would get the least traffic on Sunday, as people prefer not to have business commitments during weekends.

11) Which week of the month got more traffic?

In case if it’s an e-commerce website then we can see that the first week of the month getting more traffic. As per the buying behavior of the customers, people tend to make purchases after receiving their salary. During this period we can see the search query of the customers and target those keywords in the campaign and therefore increasing our sales.

12) Particular week of the month which is getting less traffic

In case if there is an e-commerce website which is into selling electronic goods, you will notice the traffic to be less at the end of the month. The reason is due to the expensive nature of these goods. As per the consumer buying behavior, people will not make expensive purchases at the end of the month.

13) Mobile device which is getting the highest traffic

The type of mobile device will help us understand the type of audience that we are targeting. Eg: If we see more of iPhone users, then it means that users with higher earning capacity are coming to our website. Given the type of audience, this will also help us to take decisions related to pricing. While optimizing the website, this information will help us to prioritize the type of device.

14) Comparison of visitors from mobile and desktop

Mobile users are usually impatient in browsing the pages compared to desktop users. That is the reason Google search engine has come up with Accelerated mobile pages (AMP). The screen size differs. In either of the gadgets, content is the king. It makes sense to tweak the website content for the mobile device. We can optimize the content for the gadgets and see how the users are responding to it. This will also give us the insights as to what kind of images can used for either of the gadgets so that users respond positively.

Conclusion

Intuition and experience will not hold value if you are not able to support it with facts and figures. To fill this gap, data will be needed to support our success factors and areas for improvement. Google Analytics will be immensely helpful as it is loaded with a host of features provide for free. Given the benefits of Google Analytics, you can frame strategies to bring traffic to your website and so does your business.