Tag Archives: website traffic

Give me 2 minutes and you’ll be a master at measuring your web marketing (Part 1 of 3)

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If you’re wondering how to measure the effectiveness of your web marketing efforts, then look no further than Google Analytics!

Google Analytics is a free tool you can use to measure your website’s traffic & web marketing efforts.

If you have Google Analytics set up on your website , but aren’t using it, keep reading;  as a wise man once said:

“you can’t improve what you don’t measure”

In today’s Marketing Minute we’re going to cover how to use the reports found under the Acquisition section of Google Analytics. This is the first in a series of three articles on how to use the reports found in Google Analytics.

Are my web marketing results improving over time?

You’re likely spending a great deal of resources marketing your business online – when you add up the cost of your website and time spent on social media and email newsletters, it’s mind boggling to think that the vast majority of business owners do not measure their efforts for effectiveness.

Once you’re logged in, set the date range up on the top right hand side to compare your results to last month. This way you can get a good idea if your results are improving over time.

Date-Range-Analytics

Where is my website traffic coming from?

Once you’re signed in, on the left hand side click on Acquisition and then, Overview.

From there you’ll see a pie graph, which will show you the different sources of your website’s traffic:
website-traffic-top-channelsIdeally, this is going to be diversified, showing traffic from:

  1. ‘search’, which is search engines like Google,
  2. ‘direct’ – people typing in your website name directly,
  3. ‘referral’ – websites that are sending traffic to you,
  4. ‘social’ – your social media sites, and
  5. ‘e-mail’ – from your e-mail newsletter.

What websites are sending traffic to my website?

From Overview, then click on Referrals.

This is particularly useful if you have a domain name set-up for a particular campaign that is forwarded to your website or if you’re paying for any directory sites like bigyellowbookcompany.ca.

Here’s where you can see if you’re getting enough traffic to justify paying for any additional marketing efforts. You can see by how much traffic you’re getting as well as how engaged those people are that are coming from those particular websites.

How engaged are my website visitors?

Engagement can be measured by

  1. Session Duration shows the time that people are spending on your website when they come from that particular site
  2. Pages/Session shows the number pages that they’re looking at.
  3. Bounce Rate is also something to keep an eye on as well. That’s the amount of people that come to your website and leave right away. Ideally, this will be as low as possible.

traffic-sources

How effective is my social media at sending traffic to my website?

Once you’ve taken a look at that report, the next thing I want you to do is go to Social and then Landing pages. This is fantastic.

This report will show you what pages and how they’re performing as it relates to traffic from social media websites.

So if you’re writing a blog post a week, (like I recommend that you do), you can see what blog posts are performing well and which ones aren’t.

Again, you can look at

  1. how much time people are spending on your website on each of these specific pages
  2. and how many pages are they looking at after they land on that particular page.

how-much-timeAgain, if you’re promoting a particular page, say, using Google Adwords, or promoting a specific page by posting your blog posts to social networks, you can see what pages are working and which ones aren’t.

Don’t be afraid to change & tweak your website pages & their headlines to increase your engagement and your performance of your website.

If you found this valuable, please share and/or comment. Thank you so much for watching!

5 Quick and Easy ways to get more traffic to your website

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Let’s talk about getting more traffic to your website!

Here are 5 quick and easy ways to get more people to your web site.

1. Leverage your already existing promotional materials.

One of the easiest and most overlooked ways to promote your website and get more traffic to it is to mention your website address on your voicemail!

Also, don’t forget to add your website address to your email signature and any other promotional materials, and I’m talking any – vehicle decals, brochures, signage, anything else you can possibly add your website address to, go ahead and do it!

2. Work your email contacts.

Either send out a newsletter once a month to existing clients and contacts or a personal email out to the folks you know letting them know you have a website, what it can do and ask them to share it with their network.

3. Network on Social Media

Speaking of networks, if you are not leveraging social media to promote your business yet, you definitely want to go ahead and do that as soon as you are done reading this.

Promote yourself on Facebook, Pinterest, Google +, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter, you name it! Those are just a few sites out there that can help you drive traffic to your website.

4. Update your site often.

You have to give these contacts a reason to visit your site so make sure to update it on a frequent basis and provide valuable information to your target audience.

5. Pay for traffic

Last but not least, if you haven’t thought of it already, you might want to consider advertising on Google.

Google Pay Per Click ads are an affordable way to get exposure to your clients when they are typing in what you sell on Google.

That’s your one minute tip. If you found it helpful please share and thanks again for visiting!

How Using Google Analytics Will Help You Make Smarter Business Decisions

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Did you know there is a free Google website tracking tool?

3 things Google Analytics tells you about your website trafficHere is how Google Analytics can help you achieve your business objectives.

Google Analytics is a free website traffic analytics program which provides an enormous amount of data on your website traffic and user behaviour.

In fact, it’s likely you’re sitting on a gold mine of information.

There is an entire industry dedicated to customer, consumer and market research.

It’s widely believed that the more you know about your customer and their preferences, the more successful you will be.

10 things Google Analytics can tell you about your website traffic:

Google analytics, when properly added to your website can tell you at least 10 things you didn’t know about your future customers.

1. How long people spend on your website

2. What website they were at before, that sent them to your website

3. What keywords they typed into Google or other search engines to get to your website

4. What pages they spend time on and which ones they leave right away

5. What web sites send the traffic that generate the best leads for you.

7. If this is their first time on your site or if they’re returning visitors

8. What device they are using on your site ie: Smartphone versus Laptop etc.

9. Where most of your visitors are geographically located

10. What age & gender your website visitors are.

This information is of little use on it’s own, but with a little analysis you can use these analytics to help you make smarter, more profitable business decisions.

If you knew this information for certain, you could then make fully informed marketing decisions like:

1. What marketing initiatives are deserving of their high budget.

You can tell what website are sending you high quality web traffic that consists of users that stay interested and spend time on your website, and even contact you.

You’ll also be able to tell what websites are either not sending you enough traffic, or the ones that send low quality traffic that leaves right away.

2.  What marketing initiatives should be cut

If your email newsletter sends high quality traffic to your website, but that ad on the radio station isn’t, then it makes sense to cut the radio ad.

This way you can use google analytics to make informed marketing decisions, instead of just guessing what is working and what isn’t.

3. What markets have high demand and little competition- and are ripe for the plucking.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve logged into my Google Analytics and been surprised at some small niche that has a high demand, that I am under servicing.

By quickly reacting to the information displayed in Google Analytics, I can quickly provide that market segment with enough information to make a purchasing decision. In this way I use Google Analytics to drive more profits in my business.

4. What content to create.

If you’re blogging, posting to social media properties or creating any kind of educational or marketing type materials you can use the information from your website statistics to determine what people would like to know more about.

Long tail keyword searches like “google website tracking” often show up in my Google Analytics and help me understand exactly what questions my future customers have.

If I can address these questions properly I have a chance to earn their business.

How will you use analytics in your business? Please comment below.

And, if you found this article valuable, please consider sharing it with your network.