Learning how to drive traffic to websites plays a pivotal role in the success of your business and in boosting your conversion rates online. Similarly to operating within a physical store, sales can depend on the intricacies of client interaction when running your virtual store as well. Unlike in your physical store however, you can’t depend on the regular body language cues, tones, and physical interactions that your potential clients are making with your products or services. This is where using Google Analytics comes in. The advantage of using this tool is in its simplicity, and particularly in the price point, it’s completely free. There is a little bit of a learning curve to be made at the beginning, with website owners needing to learn the ins and outs of Google Analytics to fully take advantage of this resource. When used properly however, it will serve anyone hugely in developing business and improving user interaction within your website.
In order to proceed in using this tool, the website owner needs to sign up for an account. Don’t worry, if it all seems a little bit too overwhelming at first, Google offers plenty of tutorials from beginner to more advanced levels. Google analytics primarily uses a programming language called Javascript, which is used to transfer the activity information of internet surfer to the servers belonging to Google about visitors to your website. Without getting too far into the nitty-gritty technical details, the important factor to remember in regards to Javascript is that it allows for the communication of messages from your computer to other computers which are connected to the internet.
It’s important to note that there is an enormous amount of information which is constantly being fed to Google’s servers. As many as half of the top million sites on the web are using Google Analytics as a crucial tool in business development. You may be thinking that this raises some privacy concerns on the part of millions of internet users, and Google has taken this into account. Because of these concerns, Google does not collect specific user information in regards to browser activity and will only collect this data as “x” visited this specific website 4 times, and in this way Google can protect the privacy of it’s users more efficiently.
How does Google Analytics act as a resource for boosting conversion rates?
Let’s get to the point you are looking for, how is Google Analytics actually going to provide you with the information that will allow you to make more sales online? After you have built a website, Google will help by giving you a wide number of metrics that will help you understand your online presence, and in a very specific way. These are the types of reports that Google Analytics will have to offer:
Real Time Reports:
Allows you to explore audience interaction, what geographic area they are surfing (to see where your content reaches), and what particular content they are focusing on.
Audience Reports:
This will allow you to better understand your online market to the level of knowing what device they are using. This also highlights the importance of website building and app development.
Acquisition Reports:
Reports on where the traffic itself originates, the methods with which people are accessing your website, and what their behaviour is on the site itself. From this you can learn what pages a browser spends more time on, which sections get more clicks etc.
Behaviour Reports:
Will help you to learn the behavioural patterns on your website.
Conversion Reports:
These reports track the specific actions that are happening on your website, and investigates how well your website does in getting people to interact with the different possible actions on your website. Examples of these actions are clicking on certain pages, filling out the Contact Us information, and even buying your products and services.
Use the resources Google offers you
If you need any more motivation to start using Google Analytics just imagine if you owned a lamp store, and knew exactly what lamps a customer likes, what design, how much time they spent debating on a particular lamp, what bulb warmth they like and so much more. It would just be that much easier to make a sale! All the information that Google offers you for when customers visit your virtual store will significantly help you when deciding your content marketing strategy, boosting conversion rates, and boosting client retention by improving client satisfaction.
