Hearing the words Google Analytics can give you quite a scare if you’re new to the marketing world, but we’re here to help you understand the fundamentals of Google Analytics (GA) and how you can apply it to your business.
Recently, Google released the latest version of GA called Google Analytics 4. With the world of Google forever evolving, it can sometimes be hard to keep up but here are some great reasons as to why you should be using Google Analytics within your business…
WHAT IS GOOGLE ANALYTICS?
Google Analytics 4 is an analytics service that allows you to measure traffic and engagement on your websites and apps, giving you insightful information as to what has worked and what hasn’t.
This allows you to analyse your website and evaluate what posts or sections worked best. For example, having a look at your website on GA can show you that your post about ‘An Easy Guide to LinkedIn’ has done great and received X amount of clicks/views. Whereas, your post about ‘What the Office Dog Ate Today’ didn’t really do as great, and you probably shouldn’t post much similar to it.
The system allows business owners to identify trends and patterns in how their audience engages with their websites and apps, making it extremely useful as you don’t want to be producing content that your audience doesn’t enjoy or find helpful.
Having such insights can also help you evaluate what content has led to sales and how much money has been produced from that post or advertisement piece. The aim for most businesses is to sell – knowing what works and what produces sales and having the opportunity to create more is extremely beneficial to your business.
CREATE CUSTOMISATION REPORTS
Within GA you have the choice of using their own reports that they produce, or you can build your own customized report using their accessible interface, picking dimensions and metrics in order to decide how they should be displayed.
By clicking a number of user-friendly buttons, you can drag and drop exactly what you wish to be in this report. You can customise the metrics and the dimensions that you need for this particular report, add report tabs, flat tables or map overlays and define them exactly how you wish them to appear.
Being able to customize these reports makes it easier for your business to evaluate particular parts which need the extra help, and portray them in a specific way that works for you.
COLLECT CORRECT DATA
Collecting data and being able to analyse it is a crucial part of making progress within your business and GA is the perfect way to do so. Google Analytics has a feature that gives you a helping hand when it comes to exporting the GA data into Google Docs, Sites and Spreadsheets.
Once you have set up your GA account, you need to copy a simple piece of code on your website and GA will begin collecting data automatically and generate reports where suitable.
This feature of GA is extremely useful as it allows you to view reports in multiple formats and input data without you needing to lift a finger, doing so will give you a vast idea of what is getting the best engagement.
DETERMINE YOUR AUDIENCE
Creating fantastic content and posting frequently is great, however, if you don’t know your audience or how to cater to it, you can have big issues when it comes to generating sales and leads through your website. Determining your audience and applying that knowledge when creating content for your websites and apps allows you to cater specifically to those that matter.
With Google Analytics, the system will help you uncover data about your audience and those that engage with your websites. This includes insight into the age, gender, interests such as hobbies and what device the audience is using to visit your website.
Finding out the age and gender of your audience is very useful as having a young/old audience can be two very different things. A younger audience would prefer brighter colours, modern music and news, meanwhile, an older audience might appreciate a professional, cleaner and more knowledgeable approach.
Knowing what devices your audience is using is also brilliant as you can make amends to your website depending on the preferred method. If it’s mobile phones, focusing on ‘mobile view’ when developing your website would be crucial. Whereas if it’s a laptop, there might be tweaks you can make in ‘laptop view’.
ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS
Social media, websites and creating content are all for one reason – you want to achieve your business goals. Drawing people into your site usually has these main reasons; generating sales, conversion or leads.
Google Analytics makes it extremely easy to track where your sales and leads are coming from, and which pieces of content on your website are generating the highest number of sales, therefore being able to increase the content and (hopefully) increase sales.
Within GA you can set a number of goals depending on what your business is trying to achieve such as those making a purchase, filling out a lead generation form, following your social media pages or subscribing to your weekly newsletter.
Setting these goals allows you to set milestones, see where you have made progress and evaluate what you could do better.
Google Analytics is full of helpful techniques, insights and data which can be vital for your business, and by applying the steps we have mentioned to your business, we don’t doubt you’ll achieve business excellence pretty soon.
Alongside knowing your audience, finding out what works and what doesn’t and setting goals to achieve within your business, GA is a brilliant platform which can be of great use for you and your business.
We understand that the analytics world can be tricky, so drop us an email at hello@getaudience.co.uk if you need some extra help, and we’ll be right on it!
