If you have a website for your business, you’re well on your way towards a successful online presence. Around 70-80% of consumers research a business online before visiting or making a purchase. Out of those consumers who visit a website, 88% are less likely to return after a bad website experience.
A “bad” experience can mean one of many things. For instance, difficult navigation, low-quality content and even hard-to-read layouts may send visitors away, never to return. Luckily, there’s a reliable way to measure how well your website is performing: tracking your analytics.
5 Reasons Why You Need to Track Your Site’s Analytics
A whopping 74% of marketers and website owners can’t measure or report how their effort impacts their business. Unfortunately, this means you spend time and cash on tactics that simply don’t work for your audience. Analytics give you x-ray vision into how well your website works. By using this superpower, you can:
- Discover what content works best: The only way to keep your website visitors coming back is to create content they want to consume. By tracking your page views and traffic after publishing new content, you can see which content works best, and plan your content accordingly.
- Find out where your leads are coming from: To grow, it’s important to target the places your leads hang out the most. Whether they’re finding you via social media or organically through Google, tracking traffic sources will help you focus your online presence.
- Define which keywords drive website traffic: What keywords and phrases are your visitors using to find you online? Are they looking for “accounting services” or “accountant in Minnesota”? The difference matters when creating content and optimizing your website for search.
- Improve your customers’ online experience: Your website should be easy to navigate. It if isn’t, it leaves your visitors feeling frustrated. Analytics such as the time spent on each page and which page caused the exit can help you see how long visitors are looking around and where they’re losing patience.
- See if visitors are coming back for more: If visitors enjoy your website content, they’ll keep coming back. Tracking your returning visitors gives you insight into the performance of your content.
Website Analytics 101: Start With the Basics
At first, the thought of tracking analytics seems overwhelming. To get started and ensure each effort you take counts, first follow these basics:
- Grab a website analytics tool: Google Analytics is the industry go-to. Plus, everything you need to track your website is in one place, created by the world’s most commonly used search engine.
- Define your main goal: Do you want to increase your website traffic? Do you want to be smarter in your content creation? Choose one main goal and pick metrics that will help you reach it.
- Choose one metric to track first: Out of your metrics, choose one to get started with. You’ll need to decide how often to track and create a process for documenting your measure. After you get your process down pat, you can add new metrics over time.
Website Analytics Have You Feeling Stuck? Call Our Team.
Tracking your website analytics is a process you can’t ignore. If you’re feeling stuck and you’re unsure what to track, reach out to our team by sending us a message.
