Why you should be using Google Analytics — Part 1
Google Analytics (or GA) makes it easy to understand your website and business performance. With GA, you can check on things like visitor traffic count, bounce rate, and more.
And, best of all? It’s free!
If that weren’t enough, here’s another important reason why you need Google Analytics: It’ll provide a baseline for your website’s performance so you can begin to track success and make improvements over time. Indie Retail Academy does an awesome job of explaining that here.
So, what does Google Analytics offer? Glad you asked!
Plain and simple: data. About every ‘key performance indicator’ (or “KPI”—a fancy acronym for the things you should be measuring as an online business):
– Overall website performance (bounce rate, time on site, and more)
– Info about your website traffic (where they’re coming from, what pages they visit the most)
– The ways people are finding your website (which sites are linking to yours)
– Campaign success (if you run a special offer or want to measure something specific)
While the numbers may be intimidating at first glance, data is essential for making informed business decisions. After setting up Google Analytics, you will be able to see where you need to make changes and how to optimize your business practices.
When you look at this data, you should always ask yourself how you can use it to inform your business practices— and that means everything from product offerings to marketing efforts. What products were people searching for that led them to discover you? What products and information kept people at your store for longer? Spending time analyzing the data will help you better serve your customers.
Why is Google Analytics valuable?
1. It lets you track your performance.
Numbers provide you with a tangible way to measure your progress so that you know whether or not you’re headed in the right direction. You can test the changes and improvements you make in all aspects of your business by looking at your website data. Maybe one week you increase your efforts with social media marketing, andthen see how it’s affected your website traffic. Then the next week you can track whether or not your guest blogging had any impact. You can then confidently choose which marketing efforts proved to be most effective, and delivered the most return on the investment of time (or ‘ROI’). Paying attention to where people are finding you will also give you a better understanding of your audience and who you should be targeting in the future.
2. It helps you stimulate brand growth.
By drilling down into the specifics of your website traffic, you can have a better understanding of what draws people to your store. By making more informed choices about your product offerings and content, you can grow your brand in the long run. You should always be asking yourself what you’re doing right, and what can you improve on. No matter what it is, knowing what you’re good at can help you define your brand and, as a result, help your customers feel more connected to you.
Another important thing to remember? We can always be better! Check to see what you can improve so that you can spend more time and effort on that specific part of your business. You can see what content on your storefront is popular and what you’re posting that people aren’t looking at.
In the long run, analyzing your website traffic can help you grow your business by allowing you to hone in on what your customers want and what you do well. Focusing on these metrics can help you increase traffic to your store, and hopefully make more sales.
With your new arsenal of data, you can be sure that you’ll be set up for success!
Why not try out Google Analytics now? Once you get setup with Google Analytics take a second to view our article on connecting it to your Storenvy store!
