Google Analytics Reports You Should Be Using
Managing a small business website takes more than just creating content and letting it sit. Search engine optimization doesn’t just manage itself. There are keywords to focus on, meta data to optimize, site loading times to take into account, content to create, but most importantly: data to mine. Google Analytics is a free tool that most business owners have some type of peripheral view to, and if you don’t get started today. It’s free.
Learn more about your business with
Google Analytics Reports
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What Google Analytics Can Do
Put simply, Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can give you insights into your web traffic and customer base. It’s easy to mine data into:
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the demographics of your web traffic
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the consistency of return visitors
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most trafficked time of day
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what pages are most popular
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visitor geo location data
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referral traffic sources
Related: View Creative DSM’s Certifications, Including Google Analytics >>
Reports to View in Google Analytics
Hopefully you already have a rough understanding of SEO and Google Analytics navigation including Acquisition Reports and Audience Overview. But let’s dive into some of the less known reports and why they are important to analyze for your small business.
Use the Cohort Report to Analyze Retention
The cohort report is one of the most underutilized functions in the Google Analytics interface. You can find this report by going to “Audience” and “Cohort Analysis”. This report allows you to analyze how you are keeping visitors engaged with your site. Neil Patel; the SEO Guru, has found that it takes 3.15 times for a visitor to read your blog before converting to a customer. In that same article he also demonstrated that a blog reader’s average conversion rate is 1.24%, where a normal website visitor is around .75%. Not only can you analyze how many return users you are keeping over time, but this report also allows you to create a cohort segment for later tracking.
Related: Let us help you build a retention plan for your website >>
Generate the Users Flow Report to Analyze Customer Journey
This is one of my favorite reports because it not only gives information on how visitors are entering your website, it also can give insights to where optimization is needed and how a customer expects to navigate on your website. You can view this report by clicking “behavior” “behavior flow”. On this page you will see a tree map that shows the drop off pages, the journeys that visitors are taking and best of all gain some ideas into the next step in optimization. For instance, if you know one page is a large drop off location, you may want to add exit intent, better calls to action, or maybe just a clearer FAQ answer in the subject.
Analyze the Benchmarking Report to Size up Competitors
By now I think we’ve all realized, Google basically knows everything, and luckily that also translates to your competition. Using this report, Google can help you get insights into how you are sizing up against others in your market. To get this page you’ll want to navigate to “audiences” then “benchmarking” then “channel”. Here you can see where your competitors are gaining traffic, and where you have a competitive advantage.
Track Conversion Data with Assisted Conversions
This report requires you to set up goals and conversion tracking before generating, but it’s an important insight into how your customers are taking action on your site. In the navigation bar click on “Conversions” then “Multi-Channel Funnels” and then “Assisted Conversions”. Here you can dive into how all of the channels help drive conversions. They weren’t the final channel in which someone came from but they did visit your blog from one of these channels. This is an important part of analyzing how your marketing time and dollars are best spent.
Still a Little Lost in Digital Marketing Your Small Business?
We’re here to help, no business or budget is too small.
At Creative DSM we understand the bootstrapping nature of small businesses, and we love to grow our business community. Marketing is not rocket science, but it is time consuming. That’s why our clients rely on us to keep them up to date with the latest trends and algorithm changes to get noticed online. We have a variety of customized plans built for your small business whether that entails a 2 hour coaching session, full website rebuild, monthly SEO and analytics, Google & Facebook Ad optimization or social media management. Whatever you need, let us know. We love growing our entrepreneurial community.