From measuring to knowing better - 4 do's in Analytics
"To measure is to know” is a well known quote. But measuring does not necessarily mean knowing everything.
1. Establishing and measuring goals
Your website is a means of communication. You want to reach a specific audience with a message intended to convince visitors. And of course you prefer to do that as clearly as possible, because that will get you the highest conversion.
You can measure the latter by setting up Analytics goals. A goal is achieved when a user performs a particular action, for example completes a contact form. Or subscribes to a newsletter. But an Analytics goal can also be visit duration, the amount of pages s/he visits, destination, and watching a particular video for example.
Micro and macro targets
Not all goals are equal. An important goal can be sales of a product. We call this a macro goal. Before a visitor actually buys something s/he might read the product specifications, reviews, and possibly shipping information. All these steps can be identified as micro targets.
By measuring the success rate on all those goals on conversion you get a deeper insight into the functioning and user-friendliness of the website. With this insight a website can effectively be adjusted for the user.
Funnels
It may be valuable to set up a goal funnel. This way you can track the user’s actions on the website, from inflow to outflow. Do many users leave the website on a particular page? Then it is wise to find out why.
2. Measuring internal searches
Measuring internal searches (search queries via the search form on the website) is very valuable. This allows you to better understand what the user actually looks for on certain pages and whether s/he eventually found what s/he was looking for. It also offers the opportunity to improve pages.
Because on pages where the search bar is often used a user probably expected other information. In addition, keeping track of internal queries and the time visitors spend on a certain page gives insight into keywords that are frequently used, and this is great input for search engine optimization.
4. Setting up filters
Google Analytics measures all website visits, thus also the visits of users who are responsible for content management and all other employees of your company. In addition, the hits of scripts and bots that the website receives every day are counted. That can create a tremendously distorted image in the statistics, more website visits than you think, a higher bounce rate than in reality, and so on.
Setting up filters is a must to get an overview that gives an accurate and clean view of website visits.
Novaware as Analytics partner
Setting up Google Analytics correctly can be a time consuming activity. Especially if you have to find out what features are available for every section of Analytics and implement them t. Because apart from setting goals, measuring search queries, links, and filters there are many other options to provide structure and relevance to the measured statistics.
Novaware has the knowledge and experience to implement Analytics in a correct and effective way. We set up dashboards on the basis of data that are relevant to your company. We take into account objectives, target groups, and processes that a website user (ideally) goes through. This way conversion becomes measurable.
It is possible to receive regular reports in which our specialists interpret the numbers and give recommendations. We can look at new or untapped opportunities offered by the website.
This makes measuring knowing better!
