Using Google Analytics is the best way to understand who is visiting your website, what they’re looking at, and if they’re taking the actions you want them to, and ultimately analyzing whether your website is acting as the digital storefront you need it to.
However, this free tool, while comprehensive, can be intimidating. No need to worry though! This guide will walk you through what you need to know about this powerful tool. By the end, you’ll know what the essential key performance indicators (KPIs) are within Google Analytics that you should be paying attention to for digital marketing success.
Why use Google Analytics as a small business?
Google Analytics is a one-stop dashboard for analyzing website success. Using it allows you to gain valuable insights like:
- Who your visitors are
- How visitors found your website
- What content resonates with your visitors
It can also help you identify opportunities for improvement.
Using this knowledge, you can better tailor your content to reach your target audience, make sure your website is able to be discovered by digital searches, and ensure you’re maximizing the ROI of your digital presence.
At the end of the day, Google Analytics is the best tool to help you make data-driven decisions about your website. And to top it off, it’s free!
Getting started with Google Analytics
First – do you have a Google Analytics account set up?
If not, it’s super easy. Click on this link: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/attribution/onboarding and follow the instructions. Once you’re up and running, come back and we’ll explore the key metrics and how to analyze them.
First – Identify your key web pages
If you have a small site, like ten pages or fewer, count them all as key pages. If you have more, you probably don’t want to have to pull data on them month after month, especially if many of them aren’t all that important. There are two ways to identify key pages.
Key Conversion Pages
Important pages like your home page, contact forms, and product descriptions are all crucial for customer conversions. Additionally, maybe there’s a landing page or an in-depth blog you want to measure.
You know the pages that are most important to your long-term business success and key in shorter-term marketing campaigns. Write them all down.
Top-Performing Pages
You also want to look at the pages that are actually performing best, it’s not always the ones you think! To do this, in Google Analytics go to Behavior, then Site Content, then All Pages.
Once you’re here, you can look at many different KPIs but a few that I like best are:
- Total Visitors
- Average Time on Page
- Engaged Sessions
- Bounce Rate
For the top three metrics here, the higher the better. For bounce rate, you want to keep that as low as possible. A high bounce rate indicates visitors are not finding what they’re looking for and are leaving your site to find their answer elsewhere.
The Google Analytics Acquisition Report
My personal favorite report for analyzing your overall site performance is the Acquisition Report. Here, you can see where your website traffic is coming from by looking at the different sources, such as:
- Organic Search: Visitors who found you through search engines.
- Social Media: Visitors who clicked on a link from a social media platform.
- Referral Traffic: Visitors who arrived from another website.
It’s key to know where the majority of your web traffic is coming from and how effective each of your channels are at driving engaged visitors to understand the overall performance of all your marketing campaigns, across channels.
Using Google Analytics for Keyword Analysis
If you navigate to Acquisition, then Search Console, then Keywords, you can find what keywords people use to find your website.
I’ll be honest, if you haven’t done much SEO before, or if your website is new, you probably aren’t going to rank super high but don’t get discouraged! We have to establish a baseline.
You can use this report to:
- Identify high-performing keywords (and by default, see what keywords aren’t there that you wish were)
- Find new keyword opportunities to expand your organic reach
This is the perfect place to reference when building content marketing plans, filling out editorial calendars, and prioritizing website content work.
Analyzing Google Ads, if you run them
If you run Google Ads, you can link them to your Google Analytics account for easy reference and additional insights.
Use metrics like those below to analyze the success and ROI of your Google Ads.
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
- and many more!
The most important thing about any ad is that you’re reaching and engaging the right people. Combining CTR, CPC, and if possible – whether that user makes a purchase, is the perfect trio of metrics to make sure you’re maximizing the ROI if your ad spend.
Tip: Always keep a living file on who your target audiences are to keep your ads current and your campaigns effective!
Keep your growth rolling with regular reporting
The most valuable marketing reports are timely, relevant, and useful. Personally, I prefer monthly reports for a mostly real-time look at my marketing data.
Typically, daily marketing reports are frequent to give you what you need. Instead, deploy ad hoc reports for specific, short-term campaigns, like an A/B brand messaging test, or a limited sales cycle campaign.
Quarterly and annual reports are also highly valuable and can combine with the more frequent monthly reports to add context and long-term performance of brand assets.
Going beyond the basics with Google Analytics
If you really want to get detailed and go deeper than Google Analytics’ core metrics and reports, you can:
- create custom reports,
- set specific goals, track events,
- and visualize web traffic through a funnel analysis.
With Google Analytics, you can crunch your web data any way you want it but you don’t have to get too complex too fast! You can start at the beginning and immediately get value.
Google Analytics is one of many MarTech tools that houses data about the effectiveness of your marketing and the reach of your brand. Use it to understand your digital storefront, your customers’ preferences, and your marketing ROI.
If you’re interested in learning more about Google Analytics and getting a complete analysis of your marketing efforts, check out our Mighty Marketing Report, a semi-regular analysis service that delivers the data and strategy you need, with an action plan attached.
