5 "Must-Use" Features of Google Analytics

It seems that everyone these days uses Google Analytics, but we find that many organizations benefit from a better understanding of the relevance of the report data. Looking at website visitors and pageviews is a place to start, however, there is so much more than just how many people came to your site.

Following are 5 must-use features of Google Analytics:

1. Visitors 

The Visitors tab shows how many people visited your site, the type of visitors, and information on how they interacted with the site.  However, the amount of visits your page receives shouldn’t be the only number you use to gauge your website’s success.  Other metrics, such as Average Pageviews and Bounce Rate, can show you how effective your site was at sustaining these visits. 

Average Pageviews indicates how extensively people are interacting with your site.  If this number is low, it could mean people aren’t finding the content they are seeking.

Bounce Rate is the percentage of visits in which someone left the site from the landing page.  A high Bounce Rate means that people are quickly leaving your site after opening the landing page.  

If these numbers aren’t where you would like them to be, your website isn’t delivering what it could.  Develop and tailor your landing page so that it immediately appeals to visitors and gives them a clear indication of what is offered and a reason to look at other areas of the site.  

Once you can track this data, trends and patterns are easily identifiable and you can adjust your site as necessary.  

2. Traffic Sources 

The Traffic Sources tab provides detailed data on how people are arriving at your site.  Use this information to find out how these visitors differ from each other depending on what online medium they use to get to your site. 

All Traffic Sources combines and ranks all the referral mediums in comparison to one another.  This allows you to see how organic search engine traffic compares to your paid advertisements.  For example, a beauty salon in Cleveland might advertise on Cleveland.com.  By clicking on Cleveland.com in the All Traffic Sources list, the salon can see what percent of their traffic is coming from this medium.  What if this percentage is low, but has a high Average Time on Site?  This could mean that Cleveland.com is attracting the right type of visitors, but not in large enough quantities.  The salon could try improving their advertisement for Cleveland.com and continue monitoring it to see if they can generate the right type of visitors in larger amounts.  

Keywords lists the most common keywords and phrases that people are typing into the search engines to ultimately arrive at your site.  These can be segmented by paid, non-paid, or both groups of keywords.  If you are actively optimizing your site for a set of keywords, the keyword report tells you what is working. The list of keywords displayed here are the phrases that people typed into search to find your site today. This helps identify which keywords you are missing.

3.  Content 

The Content tab contains reports on each individual page in your site.  These reports show how visitors interacted with each page including their time on the page, entrance and exit path information, and navigation summaries.  

Top Content offers a look at which pages on your site are most viewed.  You can see the specific page view information and use the Navigation Summary to see how people arrived at each page and where they went after they exited each page.  Keep in mind that if you have a checkout page for when customers have completed a transaction, it may have a higher exit rate than the average.  

In-Page Analytics opens your site within the Google Analytics browser and allows you to easily identify where users are clicking on each page and whether or not these clicks resulted in conversions.  It offers a great visual on site usage as opposed to an overwhelming list of numbers and statistics.

The tools under the Content tab help you focus on the work that needs to be done on individual pages as opposed to the site as a whole.  Look for patterns and trends in the pageview numbers to see if any pages stand out as being viewed far less than others.  It’s possible that these pages are confusing to visitors and are causing them to leave.  

4.  Goals and E-Commerce

At the end of the day, your organization created its site for a reason – to produce results.  Good SEO and good design can end up being irrelevant if your site isn’t generating these desired results.  The Goals and E-Commerce sections of Google Analytics are used to find how well your site fulfills the desired business objectives.  

Funnel Visualization gives you an idea of how successful your site is at directing visitors to your goal.  You can set these goals up from the Overview page and they can be e-commerce related or be something such as getting people to sign up for your newsletter.  If you have four steps in your goal process, the Funnel Visualization allows you to easily identify if any of the steps are over-complicated and causing people to leave before the goal is completed.  

Product Performance not only displays your total revenue for the specified time period, but also splits this revenue up according to product.  If you find that some of your highly advertised products aren’t generating much revenue, check to make sure all of the links are working and that these products are easily found when navigating through your site.  

5. Advanced Segmentation

Advanced Segments filter your data according to the path that visitors used to arrive at your site.  This helps you target your advertising to the areas with the highest chance of success.  They can be created from the drop-down menu in the top right corner of your screen.  You can use the default segments provided by Google Analytics or create your own.  This is especially helpful if you are relying on any e-marketing techniques aside from organic search engine listings.  

When you are paying for advertisements to drive traffic to your site, it’s vital that you know whether the cost is worth the result.  The customized segments uncover the specific metrics on where your leads are being generated.  Discover where your site referrals are coming from and which advertisements are successful in driving these referrals.  Begin by grouping the segment depending on what kind of visits you wish to include.  Then add dimensions and metrics to further qualify your visitors’ activities.  

Remember, Google Analytics is more than just numbers. It can help you create the best marketing mix and action steps for your site provided that you monitor the data with an eye toward your site’s optimum performance.

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Social Media Makes your Best Asset Better

If your company doesn't allow its staff to use social media, you are wasting your most valuable business asset – employee expertise. Think about it: You trust your employees to operate your business, why wouldn’t you trust them to use social media to do their jobs even better?

According to Deb Mills-Scofield, a corporate innovation expert, some companies tend to focus on using social media to communicate externally and neglect the benefits these tools can offer on an internal level and with external partners.

"This is a short-sighted way of leveraging social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn," says Deb. "It's not just about reaching out to customers, it's about your own people and how they can best use these platforms to collaborate, inform and team build."

The corporate landscape is changing rapidly, notes Deb. Companies' external and internal communication strategies need to recognize a changing workforce and corporate culture by embracing rather than banning these social media sites.

5 ways Deb says using social media internally can increase its profitability, enhance its culture and bring fresh life to its social media strategy:

1. Your employees will bring more than their lunch to work. New ideas, fresh perspectives and innovative solutions are often spawned by sharing via social media.
2. If you build it, they will come. Attracting and retaining new talent is a challenge as it is. A prospective employee is more likely to be interested and engaged if the company has a technology- and "socially"-driven corporate culture.
3. "We're a team" is more than just a company line. Internal communication via social media services or platforms connect employees across geographic and functional lines.
4. Your network just got bigger. By allowing employees to reach out via social media, new contacts and partners for innovation can be identified more quickly and easily.
5. Trust leads to higher performance. If your staff feels trusted to use social media tools appropriately, they will often perform to a higher standard.

This video will change the way you look at social media use today.

Deb notes that there are several ways for companies to begin an internal social media strategy. While many of the details are company and industry specific, all companies can benefit from a social media policy that clearly states the company’s expectations and consequences for inappropriate usage. Training and guidance on the best work-related sites to visit is imperative, as well as at-home guidelines that remind employees they might not be "on the job," but they are still representing their company. You will find they rise to the occasion!

For examples of various company social media policies, visit the Social Media Governance (http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php) website. To learn more about Deb and how she can help your company execute its plans, ideas and strategies, visit http://www.mills-scofield.com/.

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Many of our clients have asked about blogging recently and how online writing is different from traditional copywriting. While blogging can improve your SEO ranking and infuse your site with fresh content on a regular basis, it’s not without guidelines. Many of these guidelines are similar to print copywriting, such as:

•  Don’t plagiarize. Make your ideas your own and if you’re not the expert on the content, consider linking to someone who is.

• Check your facts. You want to be the source for reliable information. If a reader doesn’t trust your content, they won’t return.

• Use proper grammar. While blogging often uses a more casual tone, it still needs to be written well.

• Make it interesting and relevant to your target audience. Just because it’s a message interesting to your company internally doesn’t mean it will benefit your customers and prospects.

While online and print copywriting share the above rules, there are many aspects that make them different:

• Write the way your readers read. When someone is reading print material, they often have more time to do so. Online, your readers are looking for relevant information and keywords. Make it easy on them by breaking your copy into bulleted lists or short paragraphs they can skim. Use keyword-rich content for Google to index and your readers to more easily identify.

• Use descriptive and catchy titles. Consider this your “online envelope.” If the reader doesn’t like what he/she sees at this step, they are less likely to read more.

• Keep it short. Blogs are typically 200 to 500 words.

• Use calls to action or links to more information. This is your opportunity to further engage a reader who is already interested in what you have to say. Seize the moment to drive traffic to another informational area of your website or to online sales.

OnMark Solutions has helped a number of our clients establish company blogs that are easy to implement and maintain. Call us today if you would like our assistance in launching your own company blog or to discuss how to improve your existing one.

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If you find yourself cursing more than cheering next time you conduct an email deliverability test, it might be worthwhile to revisit a few basic guidelines around spam. And don’t feel bad, even the most experienced email marketers are constantly faced with the same challenges getting to the treasured "in" box.

Like your mother always says: Watch your language

Are you using "spammy" words, like "free," "money-back guarantee," or "buy now"? This terminology can trigger spam filters. The OnMark website has a list of Words to Avoid in Marketing Emails, but it changes often. You can also access SpamAssassin’s test they perform on all email messages to determine if they are spam or not.

Sometimes, even a seemingly innocent word can stop your email from reaching its destination. We have a client in the manufacturing industry whose message included multiple uses of the word "functional." While that seems innocent enough, spam filters were catching it because of its not-so-innocent (and out-of-context) meaning. As soon as we removed these references, our tests were successfully delivered!

Help – I’m reading an email and I can’t get out

As much as we'd all like to think our recipients want – and need – to read our emails, we have to give them a way to remove their email from our recipient list. A visible, effective "unsubscribe" link is a must. Don’t be offended if someone opts-out of your emails, unless of course, it’s your mom.

In addition, clearly displaying your company's contact information not only increases your readers' confidence in your emails, but also complies with U.S. spam laws. And if your readers have any questions, or want to purchase one million units of what you're selling, they'll know who to call.

We can see you, but no one else can

If you're going to ask for information from your readers, they deserve reassurance that you aren't selling it to a third party or sending them unwanted information. This is where a company-approved Privacy Policy is helpful. It should be linked from the footer of your email, and housed on your website. See a sample Privacy Policy.

Privacy policies describe your company’s procedures related to the information you collect from your readers. In general, a policy should include an introduction, an outline of the method you use to collect and store information, what data you collect and how to reach you with questions. This conveys transparency to your readers – you’re not trying to hide anything, so why should they?

These are just a few tips to help you avoid spam triggers in your next email campaign. OnMark can do a thorough analysis of your email marketing approach to identify areas for improvement and ROI. Our E-Audits are a cost-effective way to make sure you are on track with your online efforts.

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While I am embarrassed to even admit I know that song, its title rang true to me this weekend at my daughter’s taekwondo belt test. Upon earning her first-degree black belt, she was presented with a rose. The flower symbolized beauty combined with strength, and her instructor reminded them that while taekwondo is still male-dominated, more females are participating and that it is ok to be pretty and powerful.

Taking it from the personal to professional (the connection is here somewhere, I promise), that statement applies to our online business generation opportunities as well. You have a good-looking website, designed beautifully with rich imagery and photos. So it’s pretty, but is it powerful? Is it doing what you need it to do or just sitting around waiting for someone to notice it?

The good news is that it can be both. And at OnMark, we can help you develop a knockout website that delivers a kick.

As I ask myself every month as I’m paying the tuition at the martial arts school: is it still working? Are they getting what they need? Is this still the school for us? The answer was as clear as the smile on my daughter’s face as she accepted the fruit of four years of hard labor and realized that it is indeed possible to balance being a 9-year-old girl with the ability to achieve the rigid requirements her martial art demands.

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