I have no doubt that you have heard from many business sources that you should have a website analytics implementation (Hi Google Analytics!), but just like knowing that you need to drink eight glasses of water a day or move your body for 30 mins, it's easier said than done.

Perhaps the next question you have is...what is web analytics? I have heard the words, read the articles, seen the videos but frankly, I have forgotten.

Well, let's get on the same page as to what web analytics is.

Web analytics is measuring, collecting, analyzing and reporting the activity on your site, in order to understand how people are using it and make changes to improve the experience.

Great, now we know what Web Analytics is, let's talk about why you as an entrepreneur really need to make sure you are taking full advantage of it.

Let's look at the basics

Alright, the most basic usage of your web analytics is to understand your site traffic. Knowing how many people have visited your site by day, month, and year is very valuable. It will show you how it has changed over time, how your awareness campaigns are working (or not), how traffic changes during different times in the year (think Holiday Season vs. Summertime) and so much more.

Other important information that your analytics will tell you is how interesting visitors found your site.

Do the majority only view 1 page? If so which one? If you are an e-commerce site and the majority of your visitors only view 1 page and then leave, we have a problem. Or perhaps they view many pages, even product pages but your sales don't reflect this.

This data indicates that there is something that is blocking consumers from completing a purchase? Is it that they don't see the buy button? Is there a bug on the site that prevents items to be added to cart? Seeing this trend acts as an alarm that you may need to do some detective work to see what is causing this.

At the most basic level, understanding how many people are visiting your site and what are they doing when they arrive will provide very valuable information.

Let's get to the more advanced stuff!

Where your analytics implementation really brings it's A game is in the ability it gives you to segment your visitors. There are a number of ways that you can segment the people who visit your site, the top ones are:

- Traffic source: Paid, Organic, Social, Email, etc

- New vs Returning

- Completed a Goal: Did they buy something, download a document, filled out a form, etc.

- The average shopping cart amount (for the e-commerce sites)

These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how you can segment your data. You can combine multiple dimensions to further narrow down on specific types of visitors and be able to see how they use your site.

The ability to use segments allows you to start looking for patterns of the visitors to your site that complete the actions that are important in your business, perhaps these are signing up to your newsletter, viewing a video, making a purchase, creating an account and so on.

Let's say that after analyzing your data, you found that those who visit your site from Pinterest not just once but at least three times are 2x more likely to sign up for your newsletter.

Now, you also know that of those who sign up for your newsletter and click on to your site have a 60% chance of signing up for a paid program. Meanwhile, those who arrive on your site from Facebook are not as interested in your content and only 5% of them sign up to your newsletter.

You now know, from your analytics, that for the moment Pinterest is giving you higher quality traffic compare to Facebook. With this information, you can make better decisions on next steps.

At the end of the day, as entrepreneurs, we want to make sure we are spending our time and money in the most effective and efficient activities that will help grow our business.

Hi, I’m Karla

I’m here to help small business understand and use their website data to take the guess work out of growing their business.

I’ll love to help you start using your valuable website data to grow your business, book a FREE 30 minute discovery call with me and let’s get started.