It’s no good having a website if nobody is visiting it. Here’s 9 tips to help you keep up to date with whether your website is working for you as it should!
Get set up on Google Analytics
Your website developer will need to add some simple code to your website. If you’re getting started with a new website this can be easily done from the outset. You will also need your own Google account. Once you’ve set this up, all you need to do is access Google Analytics online and get to grips with the dashboard.
Invest time in understanding Google Analytics
Google Analytics could appear daunting at first but there’s plenty of guides and tutorials available online to help you explore what you can review. Take the time to understand what you’re capable of tracking and what is important to your business.
Get into the habit of checking
If you’re not checking daily, you should be checking your analytics at least every week. This will help you to get a real understanding of your baseline of activity on the website and any peaks or troughs.
Determine your key analytics
The amount of information you can track and review with analytics could take up your whole day. Start by determining what’s important and then make sure these figures are the foundations of your reporting each week. This should typically include the number of visitors, bounce rate, how long people stay on your site and which pages they visit.
Act on the information you discover
The data you’re collecting is useless unless you’re taking action as a result. Consider what you can do to make improvements and bring more traffic to your website. By regularly reviewing your site’s analytics you can understand what is and isn’t working well for you.
What does ‘good’ look like?
Make sure you have clear, realistic objectives in mind for your website.
These aims will be what you measure your performance and success against.
Make use of other tools
Although Google Analytics is one of the best known tools, it’s not the only one about. You can complement it with other online tools that provide different metrics. For example, hotjar shows you a heat map of exactly how visitors are using your site and nibbler can give you an evaluation of your site from broken page links to SEO compliance.
Listen to your customers
Although tools can provide great insights, nothing beats listening to your customers. Whether it’s through market research, social media and reviews, seek out your customer’s feedback on your website. Be open-minded and remember your website is for your customers so it should meet their needs!