get beyond the basics
If you’re like most people, Google Analytics represented your introduction to the world of digital marketing. At first, it might have seemed like a souped-up version of those visitor counters you used to see at the bottom of websites. But soon, you realized that the way Google Analytics tracked and presented the data about your website’s visitors went deeper than simply counting.
In fact, we can infer quite a bit of information about how visitors interact with our website based on the data collected by Google Analytics. It can tell us which page people navigate to most often after they load the home page, or that visitors tend to spend a long time on a certain page on our website, then leave the site altogether.
Both of these examples tell us some kind of story. Let’s say that upwards of 25% of your visitors load the homepage of your website, then type in a search query for one of your most popular products, then click that product in search results. You can use this information to determine how to improve the online experience for your visitors. For example, you could add a section featuring that specific product on your home page, allowing visitors to add it to their shopping cart with a single click.
But sometimes, we want more detailed information about exactly how visitors interact with our website. Which CTAs or buttons on the website are most effective? Are visitors watching our videos? Downloading our brochures?
Advanced tracking = optimized experience = happy customers
Using more advanced tracking tools and methods within Google Analytics, we’re now able to track and monitor user behavior at this level of detail. We can even configure Google Analytics to track specific behavior or actions that we define.
Let’s say you create a page on your website that highlights the features of your new product line. The description of each feature includes a button that says “Shop Now,” and brings the visitor to the product page where they can add it to their cart. With basic Google Analytics tracking, you can monitor how many visitors do, in fact, visit the product page after reading about these features.
But with advanced tracking, you could determine which button each visitor clicked to reach the product page, and therefore, which feature they were reading about just before they clicked that button. This information can help you understand which feature makes your customers go, “Aha! Now THAT is exactly what I’m looking for!”
Remember — the point of collecting data about visitors to your website isn’t simply about raw numbers. An increase in visitors doesn’t necessarily correlate to more leads, conversions, or sales. If we successfully attract more visitors to our website, but fail to optimize their experience, they won’t come back. By utilizing advanced tracking measures, we can gain a clearer understanding of what our visitors want out of our website, and continually make it easier for them to get there.
That’s how you get happy customers who come back time and time again!
Looking for more information on how to set up this kind of advanced tracking on your own website? Drop us a line today and let’s chat!
