Why is Google Analytics Important for Your Business?
Google Analytics is one of the key elements of your whole digital marketing story. This digital marketing tool provides information that will help you understand what is happening with your audience. Google Analytics is an important tool, however, it is a digital marketing tool that is underused by most businesses. But why is Google Analytics so important? Here are some of the reasons why Google Analytics is high in importance for the success of your website.
Importance of …
…Overview of All Channels
Google Analytics shows you data that shows which channels are directing traffic to your website. This includes:
- Organic Search (through SEO)
- Paid Search (through PPC)
- Social Media Platforms (Social Media Marketing/SMM)
- Referrals (Backlinks)
- Direct Traffic
Monitoring all of the channels, it allows you to review what is working well and isn’t in your marketing. Having all of the data in one place makes it easy to compare the different channels. If the money you pay per month is going towards SEO, PPC, and SMM, you can monitor your ROI.
Once you have looked at the analytics, you will be able to work out whether you might need to work on your social media strategy or cut down your PPC campaign due to it not performing. By looking at the metrics like bounce rate and time on page, it would show whether or not you would need to improve your landing pages for better ROI.
…Conversion Tracking
When looking at statistics for your site, its good to see how many people visited and where they came from. But would you want to know if those users are actually converting? Google Analytics allows you to set up goals to track when a user completes a certain action on your site. The more conversions you can get on your website the better.
…Customer Engagement
Google Analytics has a number of features that allows you to review how well your users are interacting with your site and content. These metrics monitor different aspects of the customer journey, showing how the customer has interacted.
Bounce Rate: the percentage of visitors that navigate away from your website without interaction, after viewing only one page
Page/Session: the average number of pages each visitor has viewed (this doesn’t include those who have bounced)
Average Session Duration: the average amount of time spent on the website by each visitor (this doesn’t include those that have bounced)
You can also view these stats against individual pages. This will give you a better idea as to what pages are performing well, and which may need optimising to improve the user experience.
…Device Overview
With the introduction of mobile-first rankings, this section has become even more important. Your website now needs to be mobile-friendly to be within the rankings for relevant search results. Google Analytics allows you to monitor which devices your users are using to view your site. The analytics will give some indication of how well your mobile site is working in comparison to the desktop version.
If you are receiving a similar amount of visitors from each platform, but fewer conversions on one, it may be a problem with their user experience of that version of the site.
…Combining Data with Business Goals
Google Analytics data on its own can tell you a lot about your website performance. This information can be very helpful. However, if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve, it’s just that; information. From the different statistics you can find on Google Analytics you can find a way to improve your KPIs and work to retrieve your ROI.
Why Should I Use Google Analytics?
Google Analytics allows you to track many important metrics, covering all aspects. You can monitor the effectiveness of your online marketing strategies, online content, user experience, and device functionality. All of these statistics will show you what is working well, and more importantly, what isn’t. Once you have identified any issues your site may have, you can create a solution. Google Analytics allows you the information needed to improve your website and make it the best it can be.
Written by: Amy Massey
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