You’re ready – you’ve researched your audience; you’ve created all of your content and now you’re about to launch your campaign. However, if you don’t keep an eye on your analytics, how will you know how well you’re doing?
According to Businessdit, Google Analytics is used by 55.49 % of all websites! This alone shows the importance of the platform in your strategy.
Until 2020, Google’s platform was known as Universal Analytics. This is now being replaced by Google Analytics 4 with UA being phased out – we’ve already talked about staying up to date with this, so here is our previous blog about it! It’s important to understand what’s changed and to ensure that your business is already using GA4 so that you don’t miss data or insights!
So, how can you leverage your analytics to maximise your reach, revenue and to stay ahead of the game!
What are web analytics?
So, to start with, what even are web analytics? Well.
When we talk about web analytics we’re essentially talking about the collection, measurement, and analysis of your website’s data. This data can provide a lot of useful insight into where your website traffic is coming from, how the users of your website navigate and interact with that site and what content and pages they’re most engaged with. This is vital information, as it can really affect how you build your site and where to go moving forward should you need to make adjustments.
Why are they important?
As you should already know, analytics are a no-brainer for any digital marketer. But here are some of the three most important reasons for why you should be implementing google analytics in your strategy.
You can make data-led decisions.
Using data to optimise your performance is the best way to go about making decisions about your channels and website.
For example, if you find that a blog you’ve written has performed well, optimise that page to get the most out of it by adding pop-ups or including links to other articles to share in the success.
Whilst it is best practice to follow data-led decisions, also ensure you’re verifying those decisions too to ensure you’re making the very best decisions for your website.
Reporting is easier.
An important part of a marketer’s job, whether on social media or websites, is to report on data and analytics. Of course, google analytics makes it easier to do this, showing you clearly how your website is performing in relation to your digital marketing efforts.
Ultimately your job as a digital marketer is to recreate scenarios that lead to successful commercial outcomes for your organisation or clients. You can do this more easily if you can see what does well and what doesn’t using data.
You can find the story behind the data.
One of the greatest things about web data analysis is that it allows you to find the ‘story’ behind your data to gain valuable insight and in turn, improve your business performance with purpose. Web analytics can help you understand your customers better and see their journey across your channels, which is vital for optimising them. It tells you who they are, where they’re from, their interests – it also tells you their demographics, location, and any conversion challenges that your website may be facing.
This information can help you improve your customer’s experience, therefore optimising your customer’s experience on your website.
What is Google Analytics?
Whilst there are many analytics tools out there, the market leader is Google Analytics. There is a paid version called Google Analytics 360, which offers additional functionality in terms of reports or sample sizes but, quite frankly, unless your website is receiving something over 10 million page views per month, it’s not worth it. For most websites, the free version of Google Analytics is more than enough.
Because of its functionality and widespread adoption in the market, Google Analytics is seen by many as the “single source of truth” when it comes to website analytics. Whilst that’s fine, it’s also important to review many other sources of analytics to see what works best for you and your website!
What are the benefits?
There are many benefits to using google analytics, here are just a few:
- It’s free.
- It’s easy to implement.
- It’s user-friendly.
- You can customise your reports, dashboards, and data.
- It offers basic and advanced options.
- It offers seamless integration with other Google products (perfect if you’re already using Google Ads!)
- It offers post-click integration with non-Google traffic sources, including Facebook, Yahoo and Bing.
- It provides valuable insights into your website’s behaviour.
What are you waiting for?
Google Analytics can provide you with a goldmine of data, but it can be overwhelming at first. The best way is to go ahead and have a go, and we promise you will reap the rewards. Being able to read and understand your data is vital to your strategy, as it will allow you to be able to alter that strategy and adapt your content, your website, and make it the best it can possibly be!
