Guest Post By Gus Kroustalis, Beacon Technologies
Every website owner should have a sense of how their site is being used by visitors, how many come, and other factors that help in an evaluation of the site’s effectiveness. You don’t need to be a “Digital Master” to maximize the many free analytical tools offered by Google. Site search, event tracking, and goal conversion are three tools every small business website can utilize for increasing sales.
Google offers free website analytics and helpful tutorials for the non-technical person. Almost anyone can implement the analytics tracking code. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I come across many websites that only have the basic tracking in place. With a few extra steps, you can go from seeing basic page view data to much more meaningful and actionable website analytics.
My three top picks are listed below. They do require a bit more configuration beyond the base tracking code but are worth the effort.
Site Search
How do you know how a perspective customer experiences your website? You commissioned the website. Therefore, the website’s navigation and content is intuitive.
Site search enables you to see the site from a customer’s perspective. A website manager can use site search reporting to understand what topics are difficult to find on the website as well as content that customers are seeking that may not be provided. With the results, you can make informed decisions about changes to the navigation, home page layout and more.
Click here to access the tutorial for setting up site search tracking
Event Tracking
Does your website have video? Do you offer PDF downloads? Do you have call-to-action buttons to entice conversions?
The base Google Analytics code does not track activity for any of those areas. Event tracking is a type of code snippet added to these areas of a website in order to provide data for numerous analytics reports. With this data, you are one-step closer to taking advantage of goal conversion tracking.
Click here for the tutorial on event tracking conversion.
Goal Conversions
If your website is set up for success, then you probably have at least one of the following: contact form, email sign-up, E-Commerce purchasing, and document download. Configuring goals in Google Analytics allows you to track goal conversions against many user dimensions, including traffic source, user location, landing page, and more.
Click here for goal setup help
Google has rapidly advanced digital marketing opportunities and in the process revolutionized how businesses conduct marketing. Analytics, pay-per-click, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and more have made marketing more predictable and enabled marketers to become more accountable for a return on investment.
With the right analytics, you know immediately if your strategy is working. With that information, course and speed changes can be made quickly. The result is strategic digital marketing that works.
Gus Kroustalis is a digital marketing expert with Beacon Technologies in Greensboro, NC. He holds an MBA from Elon University. Connect with Gus on Google+. Email Gus Kroustalis