In our most recent unLTD column, we looked at the importance of tracking your company’s digital activity. We also explained how you can use the insight you discover to drive business growth.
One of the areas we touched on was Google Analytics, which holds the key to vast amounts of website data you can use to your benefit.
How Should I Measure Performance Using Google Analytics?
When you’re looking to make comparisons in Google Analytics, it’s vital to first consider whether other factors could have influenced improvements or drops in performance. Examples could be:
A particularly bad spell of weather, which has lead to an increase or decrease in sales
Seasonal trends such as Christmas
As a result of factors such as these, year-on-year (YOY) comparisons will always be more useful than monthly ones for effectively measuring growth.
Which Metrics Are Most Important?
There are countless ways you can use Google Analytics data. The metrics most important to measure through your YOY comparisons will really depend on your business. Examples include:
Overview: Quickly assess factors such as how users engage with your site. If people land on your homepage but then leave the site straight away, there’s a good chance they’re being put off by what they’re seeing. Or, if they’re falling off at the checkout, you might need to simplify the process.
Behaviour: Access key insight such as which pages your website users are first landing on, the journey they’re taking through your site and key ‘events’ (such as form submissions).
Audience: Make useful data comparisons such as which devices people are using to view your website. Does most of your traffic come from desktop, for example? If it does, there could be a reason why your mobile site isn’t performing as effectively.
Traffic Source: A great example of this in practice is digging into the referral traffic to your site from an external publication that’s promised you traffic in exchange for membership. You can quickly see whether this is happening or if they’re failing to deliver.
Conversions: Once you’ve installed the correct tracking, you can measure which channels are driving revenue for you and assess which products are performing most effectively.
These are just some of the many examples of things you can do with Google Analytics data. For help with installing Google Analytics or using the data it provides to take better decisions for your business, get in touch with Evoluted.
