Google Analytics and other website stats are great, but they can be a little confusing or even overpowering. How do you find the actionable insights that help you take the next step towards your goals?

It's not just a numbers game

We come across so many companies that are simply counting clicks, largely because they still subscribe to the idea that marketing is just a numbers game. Well, before the internet that was very much the case because there was no sophisticated way of recording anything other than the outcomes.

That's all changed, because we can now track the progress at every stage of the lead generation through to conversion process.

The typical experience of web analytics

It goes something like this:

1.Get Google analytics installed and start monitoring the following data points:

• Traffic - how many people are visiting the website?
• Duration - how long are people staying on the website for?
• Page Views - which pages are people accessing?
• Bounce Rate - which pages are turning people off?
• Geographics - where are all of these people coming from?
• and a few others.

2.Using the old paradigm, assume that more visitors equates to more enquiries which in turn leads to more sales. Therefore how do I get more visitors?

3.Be persuaded that more visitors comes as a result of better visibility on page one of google, so sign up to a contract for SEO (search engine optimisation) to get onto page one of the search engines.

4.After a few months of discover that whilst there may be more clicks there doesn't seem to be more sales / conversions. So start looking at the web pages to see why people might be exiting.

5.After a few more months and a lot more money, give up looking at the Google analytics because you cannot figure out what is going on. At the same time become very sceptical about SEO, PPC, Google and so called specialists.

What's Missing?

The data tells a story about a real person who may or may not want to use your services, or buy your products. We need to break it down into three basic questions:
What are we hoping will happen?
What do we know now? / What do we think is actually happening?
What don't we know that we would like to find out? / How can we test that?
Perhaps this is a helpful time to be reminded that all business is, is an organisation of systems and processes in a certain way so as to achieve a better return. So ground your measurement and management in the real world of your business operation.

Go for depth not breadth

Wouldn't analytics be more powerful if we could understand the visitors journey; What keywords brought him here? Is he using those words as I would or differently? What was his navigation path? Why might he have exited there? Is it because he was looking for something different or did he just not like what he found? How can I figure this out?
Combining something like Google Analytics with more intelligence will really give you more power and insight to improve decision making about how you shape your business and how you develop the visitor/customer experience.

We can help you make sense of your web data. Get some insight into how to improve your business by getting in touch.