What can Google Analytics tell you about your website?

Your website is one of the most useful tools that your business has. So, having an in-depth perspective on how people interact with it, what works and what doesn’t, is crucial to getting the most from the investment you’ve made in creating a web presence. Whether you’re about to spend money on a redesign or you’re just looking for ways to get more from your existing structure, the insights that Google Analytics can offer are essential.

How are people viewing your website?

Google Analytics can provide key information on how your website is being viewed by users. So, you’ll be able to see which browsers people are using – Mac, Windows, or mobile – and the screen sizes through which your site is being seen. This kind of information can be fed into marketing decisions so that you can prioritise specific browsers and screen sizes in your marketing strategy. It may also help to explain something like a high bounce rate, for example – if your people are viewing your website via mobiles but the site is not optimised for mobile then there is a good reason why they are leaving straight away.

Where does your traffic come from?

Understanding how users have arrived at your website is insight that you can feed into making marketing decisions and strategy more effective. Google Analytics will show you exactly where your traffic has come from, including:

• Direct – someone entered your website’s URL
• Organic – a user arrived on your website via an internet search
• Referral – a link from another site e.g. your social media pages

Who makes up your audience?

Demographics information will give you important perspective on who is currently finding your website. Specifically, Google Analytics will show you where your audience is based – and which countries you’re getting a lot of traffic from. You can even drill down to data on which cities within those countries are responsible for a proportion of your traffic flow. Demographics information is another crucial insight for better tailoring of marketing campaigns and understanding whether your existing efforts to reach out to new audiences are proving successful.

How do users interact with your pages?

It’s often a surprise to discover that the most popular pages on your website are not necessarily the first in terms of the order that you designed the website to be experienced in. So, you may find that the Home page is not the top page, for example. Google Analytics will reveal the top pages on your website, which can be useful for determining the factors that make specific web pages attractive – as well as whether SEO is working. You’ll also be able to see which pages attract users from specific countries, which can be incredibly useful for audience targeting.

Google Analytics help to build an overall picture of how your website is functioning and who it appeals to. It’s this kind of insight that will enable you to make changes that ensure you get return on website investment and make contact with your target audience. If you’d like to find out more, contact our team.