If you have a B2B website, you certainly have heard about or use Google Analytics. It’s a great tool that contains loads of highly useful information that can help improve your website and thus improve your business.
But if you’re not used to reviewing analytics, it can be confusing and even intimidating. It doesn’t have to be. Once you understand the data Google Analytics gives you, it’s not that difficult to modify your tactics and make your site ever more productive.
There’s a lot to cover in Google Analytics, so here are some explanations of a few metrics, and how you can use them to your benefit:
- Visits: How many times your website was visited. To get it noticed, promote your site everywhere: business cards, print ads, brochures, flyers, email signatures, social media accounts, bumper stickers – you name it.
- Unique Visits: Unduplicated visits. For example, if 20 people visit your site twice each week, you would have 40 visits but 20 unique visitors. Meet new people and make new connections, both online and offline. If your marketing materials contain your website URL, your new connections are more likely to check it out.
- Page Views: The total number of pages your visitors viewed. Make sure your website has valuable, interesting content to encourage users to delve deeper into the website
- Pages/Visit: A very important metric. It shows how many pages, on average, each of your visitors went to. The higher the number, the more your visitors are interacting with your website. If your visitors are visiting three or more pages, it shows that your site provides them with valuable, interesting content. If they find your content valuable, they’re more likely to want to use your product or service. Your website’s navigation should be clear and easy to understand. If one of your product pages references another product, make sure you link to that second product page. The goal is to provide the content your potential clients need to answer all of their questions and make it easy to find.
- Average Visit Duration: This metric is related to pages per visit. If you average 10 pages per visit, but the average visit duration is only one minute, it may be that your visitors can’t find the content they’re looking for: they jump from page to page, looking for what they want. Again, quality content is key. A regularly updated blog is a good place to start.
- Bounce Rate: This is one that a lot of people don’t know about or understand. A bounce rate measures how many people visited one page of your website and then left. Bounce rates can be kind of tricky to analyze. A blog, for example, may have a very high bounce rate if your homepage displays the entire contents of the last 20 blog posts. You could have 1,000 visitors to the home page, read all 20 blogs, and then go to a new website, and you would still end up with a high bounce rate. Bounce rates always need to be analyzed in light of the purpose and design of your website. To decrease your bounce rate, make sure your homepage has a compelling call to action, since that’s how most people will come to your site. The call to action should lead visitors deeper into your fascinating website.
- Percentage of New Visits: This metric shows you the percentage of visitors that have never been to your website before. If this percentage is high, it likely means that a lot of people that don’t already know who you are taking interest in your business. A call to action is very helpful here as well. Try to connect with these visitors by asking for their email address so they can receive a special offer; or have them subscribe to your blog or request a white paper. Either way, you need to get in touch with them to keep their interest high.
