Should I be using Google Analytics like everyone else?
In short yes, yes you should!
You should be implementing GA (Google Analytics) through GTM (Google Tag Manager) and here’s why.
It’s free
If you’re reading this, you are probably quite new to analytics. But in Analytics as it is in life, free things are always good. As the saying goes never look a goft horse in the mouth. They give you the opportunity to get your feet wet and understand what analytics is all about before moving on to paid tools which give you greater depth and more insite into specific areas of your site.
User friendly
You don’t need to know anything about it to use it. Everything is in a logical place and if you play with it for more than an hour you will be able to find your way around it quite easily.
Home = An overview of your site
Customisation = Reports, Alerts, Dashboards you build
Real Time = Live data for your website
Audience = Who your users are
Acquisition = How your users found you
Behaviour = What they did on your site
Conversions = How often did they do what you wanted them to
If you have a specific questions that is not answered in the basic reports, then you will probably need to hire a pro. Lucky we know a great company for that . . . us!
It’s connected
Google Platform of tools, GTM is the best way to implement GA, GA incorporate Google AdWords and Google Webmaster Tools now called (Search Console), BigQuery, Optimize and much more. So you know all your data is reading from the same song sheet. You should be using all of those as well.
Make no mistake there are lots of other tools out there that will be good for you to use, but like anything in life walk before you run. What you don’t want to do is gather so much information using so many different tools on your site you A, slow your site down or B, can’t analyse all the data and as there is so much you lose focus of what is important.
ALWAYS KEEP IT SIMPLE!
So what next, you have GA, then what?
Well once you have Google Analytics installed correctly and you have checked the data it is producing is correct you then need to start comparing your website targets to the number Google Analytics is giving you. So if you are an eCommerce site you should be measuring:
- Sessions/Unique Visitors
- Product Page Sessions/Unique Visitors
- Add To Basket
- Cart View Sessions/Unique Visitors
- (Checkout Steps) – However many steps you have.
- Orders
- Conversion
- Checkout Conversion
- AOV
- Bounce Rate
These are a few of the basic measurements you should be looking into on a regular basis to see how your site is performing. Day on Day, Week on Week, Month on Month, Quarter on Quarter and Year on Year.
I measure the basics and my site is okay, what can i do to improve it further?
Come and speak to us. There are so many different parts and possibilities to a site and it’s target market, it’s impossible to give a generic answer to what can take your site to the next level. We would need to sit down and dissect your site, target market, aims & objective and competitors to really lay out a road map of how to bring your site forward from a performance perspective and User Experience perspective.
Get in contact with us today to improve your sites performance.