You may have heard references to visits, referrals, keywords before. These terms are all related to the analytics or statistics on the performance of your website. Google Analytics is an extremely important tool to determine the effectiveness of a website.
Here is what you can learn by using the free Google Analytics tool.
Who Is Viewing Your Website?
In any organization, gaining prospective clients or donors is often the primary goal. Within your website analytics you should be able to learn the following about who is viewing a website.
- Number of website visits
- General location of visitor (Country, State)
- Returning user: is this their first time visiting the website or not?
If you want to capture names or emails of these users you will want to consider implementing one of the fol-lowing items.
- Newsletter sign-ups
- Requiring a sign-up to view specialized content
- Strong call to action on every content page so they email or submit a contact form
How Did a User Find a Website?
If you have created brand awareness with a prospect it is important to understand how that happened. The following reports can help you identify how a user found your website.
- Website Referrals
This would include a user accessing the website directly, linking from another website or social media.
- Keywords Used
If a user accesses a website from Google (or another search engine), you can learn what a user typed in by using the keyword report.
What is Viewed on a Website?
Once you have captured a user it's important to know what they are looking at. Within Google Analytics you can gain the following information.
- What content page a user viewed
- What content page a user started and ended on
- Which links or files were clicked on
This does require some set-up within Google Analytics through event and goal tracking
As you can see the data available on your website is extensive. This information can help you make an in-formed decision on changes or upgrades to your website, but most importantly, the effectiveness of content.
If you would like to learn more about specific reports or to determine how to get started with Google Analytics, contact us today.
