Setup web analytics on your website! I still come across many people that are spending money with adwords, with no idea about where those clicks are coming from or how long they are staying or what other pages they are navigating to.
Or you maybe someone that is on Twitter or using Facebook but you not tracking the click throughs to your website with Analytics.
This is a big mistake. It is like you are marketing in the DARK!! Don’t do it. Before you think about search engine optimization or give any thought to marketing online, be sure you take some time to setup Google Analytics on your website.
Google Analytics is free. All that is required to set Analytics up is
1. A Free Google Account
2. The ability to paste some javascript code onto your website.
If you’d like to learn more about Analytics, here are two blogs that I read frequently to help answer my Google Analytics questions.
and VKI Studio Blog
and Avinash Kaushik (Great Resource!)
Enjoy tracking your visitors and making decisions about how you can market more effectively online with web analytics!
Rodney Bartlett
Lead Instructor – Reachd.com
Hi Rodney,
How are things back in Kansas? I hope well.
So I have Google Analytics – it has been set-up for a while and today after reading your blog post, I took a look for the first time!
Are there any “courses” to give an overview of how to best interpret things? Some of it is quite straight forward, but some of it isn’t… any tips?
I appreciate it!
Wendy
Hey Wendy,
Kansas is good. Not as hot as Vancouver I hear.
We don’t currently have any courses on Google Analytics and I don’t know of any that I can recommend.
I would look at these things:
1. Bounce Rate (which page has the highest & which the lowest)
2. Most popular pages
3. New vs. Returning visitors
4. How many uniques (especially if you are running any aggressive marketing or new campaigns)
5. Sources (search engine traffic, advertising, etc. This one is really important especially if you are paying for advertising on other websites.)
What other questions do you have about Analytics?
Like Wendy, I stumbled onto your blog to better understand Analytics and learn more about marketing my blog. Your blog posts have been helpful as have your vlogs on a subject… I learn better when someone is giving me those subtle inflections when something is important. Thanks!
Thanks for the tips Rodney! I really appreciate the reply.
Hi again Rodney,
Congratulations on your new home. How exciting!
I am finally getting back to this… we’ve been totally slammed (which is good) but we’re growing so fast that I’ve had to throw all the money back into the business to buy more and more materials therefore there is none left to pay someone to HELP me!
Anywho… I know about Bounce Rate, but when I click on it, it only tells me the rate for each day in the report. How do I see the rate per page? I’ve looked around to no avail. Oh! I take that back.. found it under Content. So what do I do with that information? My “Our Story” page has the lowest Bounce Rate and some of my blog posts and my buy pages (not good I imagine) have some of the highest Bounce Rates.
I have 82% new visitors.
86% of visitors are uniques.
Traffic sources are 15% direct, 42% referring sites and 43% search engine.
Of that 30% are finding me from organic Google search results, 15% are direct and 8% are cpc (AdWords).
And funny, after breaking online sales records all spring and summer, I’ve had a weird slump of sales in Sept (down 7%) and October (down 33%). My traffic is the same so I don’t know what has changed???
My most popular pages are my Home Page and my Buy Page by far.
Thanks for any help that you can provide…