Analytics
People who do not use Analytics in their advertising throw money at a target and hope enough hits to make it profitable.
We analyze your ad spend to see what ads are working and how much they are costing. If something isn’t converting to profit, then we need to change something. This is a constant process and requires much diligence. The lack of knowledge in this area can cost you lots of wasted time and ad dollars.
Most Popular Tracking Metrics
Probably the most popular metric to keep track of is demographics
Which Pages are viewed the most
This gives you an insight as to what people are interested in when they visit your site. Which pages are viewed the most and also time spent on each page. It tells what content has value to the visitor, and may be an area or subject that you may want to keep a close eye on. It tells you the title is working, which means that people want information on that subject. If they stay there awhile, then your content may be deemed as having value.
If they leave quickly, then you know that while the page title grabs attention, the content isn’t holding them there, which means you have work to do by providing better content.
Engagement on site
How long are people staying on your website and each page? You can also view a click path to see how people flow through your site.
Top Landing Page
We can keep track of which landing pages are working the best. If we are running multiple campaigns at the same time, and are doing some A-B testing or testing more ad campaigns at the same time, we would likely have numerous landing pages set up and running in various venues.
What is Bounce rate?
Bounce rate measures the number of people who come to your site and immediately leave. In most cases, visitors who come to your site and leave immediately do so because they are not seeing the information on that page that meet their needs. This is the metric that tells you if the visitor isn’t engaging with that page and quickly clicks out.
Sometimes however bounce rates are high when people are coming to your page and find exactly and quickly what they wanted to know. Say the cost of a product or service. Or if an item is available in their favorite color. Bounce rates from organic search traffic are typically high on product pages.
Track using Forms Response
If they have filled out forms, well you should have their data. We can track that data by numerous methods. We can also see conversion rates. The fact that someone fills out a form tells us they do indeed have interest.
We know what Device you have!
Believe it or not, there are tools available that we can track what type of phones each user is using when they access your site/pages. Actually, sort of erie that that type of information is known.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority or DA is a metric that is highly used to determine your ranking in Google. This is very complex, but includes all types of data like SEO keywording, title, description, backlinking, social media involvement and about a thousand other metrics. In order to achieve a higher DA than your competition, you need to rank better in most of these areas.
Basically, what Google gauges for the search words in focus is, internet presence and relevance. That one sentence encapsulates what Google wants, but to achieve that, it takes lots and lots of diverse work. Sort of like saying, hey, lets build a car! One short line, but many components are necessary to make it run well. Not to mention, be in compliance with government rules (Google Policies and Practices).
Can I Track Return Visitors?
“I’m Back”, means I like what I am seeing. Make sure you have tools in-place to capture their contact info so you can lead them into the next step, which will further them down your sales funnel to the ultimate goal of doing business with them.
How can I know my Page Views?
While this metric doesn’t really tell the story by itself, it does give us an idea how well we have done our job by bringing in eyeballs to the site. It doesn’t take into consideration sales or revenue, but it does serve to let us know that our efforts are at least working. And we can track where the traffic comes from which is very important to know.
With this knowledge, we know where to spend more time and perhaps more money in marketing. Also, within this we can have metrics that track sales from each traffic route. If we see that we are getting a lot of traffic from Facebook, but those aren’t converting as well as other campaigns, we may want to decrease spending or time spent on that platform in favor of more lucrative campaigns as shown us via the analytics data.
Where is my Traffic Coming from?
As mentioned above, tracking where your visitors are coming from is a powerful tool. As they say, knowledge is power. And this can be no better related than here in analytics. If we are getting lots of traction from a particular source, we may want to increase our engagements in that source stream to get even more optimal results. It will tell us where our budget may be better spent.
Identify poor performing pages
Let’s face it, you are not going to score on every page on your website. Analytics can show the good, but also the bad. These pages that don’t do well on certain levels, need to be deleted or restructured or revamped completely. It is good to know where problem areas are so you can address those in various ways. Either to bring them up in value or to delete pages that show no merit.
Track Shopping Cart Abandonment
We can actually track the point that people abandon their shopping cart. Do they start entering their information and then click out? Did they get to their address or all the way to the pay button? If we have their email (usually entered early in the form), we can send emails with reminders or offers to help them complete the purchase and continue where they left off. Lots of sales are gained by a bit of personal interaction.
View Your Competition
Reverse engineer your keyword useage and ad buys using analytics to view what keywords your competition is using to rank. This allows you to outrank them. There are also tools that will tell you how much they are spending on PPC (pay per click) for any given keyword. Talk about power to defeat! If getting to the top of the search page is your goal, then this strategy may be one to look at.
Test your ads
Of course, we recommend doing all sorts of advertising in various forms that are either no cost or little cost per impression in favor of just buying ads. Some people think that if they spend a lot of money they will automatically move up the ranks, and of course, your paid ads will give you that placing. But unless you want to continually pony up the money for expensive clicks, the best practice is to become an authority in you sector organically. That is by using other methods than just buying ads. Yep, lots more work, but organic traffic is much stronger than paid advertisement because it comes with it domain authority that has been built on community feedback and other naturally gained factors.
I know of a few marketers that have built very successful businesses by never spending a dime on google, facebook or other on-line platform ads. They have done it organically. But this is a process that doesn’t happen overnight and it does involve the intelligent use of keywording and seo mastering.
Organic Traffic is Best
In my opinion, this organic traffic/business building is the most powerful and cost effective way to build a long term sustainable business with a high level on-line presence. Don’t underestimate the power of people! If you are doing a good job with the physical parts of your business (offering good products or services), then people will respond with positive comments, likes, shares, feedback, referrals etc.
What is Lead Converstion Rate
Conversion rates are equal to the total number of conversions divided by the number of leads and then multiplied by 100. So if you had 100 leads, and 20 of them became new customers, your lead conversion rate is 20%.
Word of Mouth is still the best!
Word of mouth still is the most powerful form of advertising. If you harness the power of the internet to utilize social (word of mouth) your business will be much stronger than by merely buying ad space on the common platforms. If there is opportunity to place ads in your sectors trade magazines or site, it may make more sense for that to be the place to put your dollars to work.
Mud on the Wall
You can see from the brief above that the information available about your website (and every page that makes up your website) can be dissected and reported on in a whole host of methods. This data can be used to validate the usefulness of each page and how visitors react and interact with each. Analytics is invaluable in today’s web. So much so that without using analytical data, you are really just shooting from the hip. Throw enough mud on a wall and some of it has to stick. This old adage is true, but is not a very prudent way of spending your advertising dollars.
Intelligence Report
Think of Analytics as your intelligence report. If you could KNOW where your marketing is having beneficial results, wouldn’t you want to? Yes you would and that is why analytics tools were developed. To give people insight as to what is being effective in their marketing campaigns and just as important, what is not effective and not producing the desired results in their campaigns. But not limited to ad spend, analytics goes way beyond campaigns and is used to sniff out what is working and what is not working. Down to the page level. In the future, it may be able to know what paragraph is being read when someone clicks out. In my opinion, we are already close.
How many Analytics Tools do I need?
While there are tons of tools, most of which have merit, many overlap and is easy to get duplicates. How many 9/16 inch wrenches do you have in your tool box? How many do you actually need? Ladies, how many shoes do you own? How many are the same color? Ok, you get the idea. It is good to have options, but sometimes too many options just leads to confusion. So we get the tools we need to do a particular task, grab the data we deem useful and make alterations on the pages and marketing elements that will build up those areas that are lacking.
It is not only informative and helpful to have this data available, but without it, all you have is a pretty website. Hoping to be found in the world wide web.
It is also fascinating to view these reports, but the power lies in the information they provide to make it clear where changes are needed and where the chaff that doesn’t benefit anyone lies.
If you want to move past the “we have a website” and into the “our website brings in revenue” realm, then you should get someone involved who will be able to take you to that place.
There are so many people that invest in a website, not knowing that they need analytics or seo or even knowing about the various tools available. They pay someone to build a site (or try to do it themselves) only to have the site just site there, month after month, year after year, not doing anybody any good. In fact, just filtering off resources month by month and the sad part is that the owner has no idea how to change it.
You need a good Foundation
It is sad that nobody has ever taken the time (especially the web builder) to tell them that the build on a website, is only the beginning. It is the basic building block or foundation. It is not the end. Once a foundation is laid (site is built), then you need to add walls, (structure), roof (security), plumbing (backlinks), wiring (cross links), sheet rock (packaging) and on and on.
With so many venues vying for your advertising dollars, it makes sense to know what your on-line presence is telling you. Using analytics to know what the web thinks of you/your site/your business, is a very valuable tool that you don’t want to overlook.
TrendStrategics is more than a SMMA (Social Media Marketing Agency). We understand Advertising, utilize physical marketing and internet marketing to bring a well rounded solution to increase your growth, awareness and pump up your bottom line. We are a Topeka Kansas Web Design company that does business all across the United States.
While we are client selective, I always welcome an opportunity to help. Pick up the Phone!