For More Customer Engagement and Further Business Growth

For More Customer Engagement and Further Business Growth

Pages to Track and Study with Google Analytics and Other Web Analytic Programs

You want to monitor your website using web analytics, but you don’t know which to track. There’s your site content, the social network campaigns, and other web pages. Keep watch over website traffic with Google Analytics. This software helps entrepreneurs measure, analyze, and report Internet data for business and market research. It will also aid in understanding how visitors use your website, which gives you ideas for improving your site traffic.

How do you start tracking your web pages? Where should you focus –off-site or on-site web analytics?

You can use off-site analytics to measure a website’s potential to attract visitors, visibility in search results, and find out what customers are saying. It will identify the web pathways a user took to find a certain site.

On-site analytics, on the other hand, track visitors’ footprints once they enter your website. It measures the bounce rate, or the percentage of visits where a visitor enters and exits a website without visiting other pages on the site. It also notes the landing pages your visitor views if he or she continues browsing. Visit records from cookies are used to determine whether the user is a unique or repeat visitor. On-site analytics compare key performance indicators to determine if your website meets your goals.

Which type of analytics should you use? This would depend on what you want to find out. It would be better to decide on what you want to improve upon first. Do you want to drive more traffic to your site or make visitors engage with your content more? Concentrate on one aspect first, so your data won’t overwhelm or confuse you.

Still wondering where to direct your online tracking and research with Google Analytics? Here are ten analytics goals from Ran of Web Analytics World:

1. Comments – Note whether visitors have posted comments on your posts. Make sure to track two actions, namely, ‘Submit your comment’ or ‘Post your comment.’ This helps you take note of their reactions, feedback, or queries, and see whether a user posted spam or pasted a link to malware. Create a virtual page view for your comment buttons and set Google Analytics to track these on-click events.

2. Social Bookmarking Actions – Use Google Analytics to track these outbound links if you have buttons that allow content sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networking sites. You’ll need to edit the Google tracking code, add ‘/outgoing/’, and set the page goal to ‘outbound.’ This will enable you to find out whether your visitors believe your posts are worth sharing with their friends.

3. Newsletter Subscriptions – Find out if you’re successful in attracting a large following of readers. Tagging your email campaigns using Google URL builder help you understand its revenue count and conversion rate. This will inform you how many subscribers you get.

4. Catalog Requests – This will be an important feature to track if you have an ecommerce site. Perform the same process you followed when you set up Google Analytics to track newsletter subscriptions. This will help you monitor the number of subscribers and know which ones bought your products or services.

5. New Account Openings – Another important facet to monitor is the ‘Create an Account’ or ‘Sign Up’ button, especially when you’re running an ecommerce website. Setting Google Analytics for this allows you to find out the hindrances preventing users from making new accounts or completing their orders. It may be you’re requesting unnecessary details, like complete home addresses or phone numbers. Another reason may be your captcha form. The letters and numbers might be difficult to read. Improving upon these weak points will help you get more members.

6. Feed subscriptions – To track the number of feed subscribers, you’ll need the trackPageview tag to create a goal page. You need to update the feed link on the blog or website to assign the goal page to the RSS link correctly. Tracking feed subscriptions will help you learn if you’re providing attention-grabbing and meaningful content.

7. File Downloads – You’ll need a tracker for file downloads if you’re managing a file-hosting or sharing website. You need to tag the link with the _trackPageview() JavaScript to monitor the downloads. This will help you learn which files get the most number of downloads and inform you of what the most looked-up files are.

8. Call-Back Requests – Most call-back widgets have two tracking pages: ‘Request a Call’ and ‘Confirmation.’ You can add a goal value in the analytics if you need to track revenue using calls. This will help you discover whether the calls you receive are effective in generating sales or solving complaints.

9. Leads – Monitor your sales leads with special encoded links to your company website. Lead tracking software likes SalesGenius will inform you when the lead opens the email and clicks the link. The lead is directed to the website with a distinct URL. This allows the tracking software to record which pages are viewed and what links are clicked. Online tools like GeniusTracker enable entrepreneurs to see the pages the leads viewed to understand what exactly they are looking for.

10. Sales – Tracking sales can mean acquisition or loss of profit for your business. Keep a record of every transaction with each customer. This will allow you to focus on the ones most likely to make a purchase or need some convincing to buy a certain product. Use a Google analytics tracking number to get information about the visitors, page views, referring source and keywords.

11. Website User Reviews – A positive or negative review can make a difference for a company. A good review encourages sales, while a bad one can harm your marketing campaigns. Create a page in your site where customers can submit their feedback about your products and services. Track this page to learn which reviews attract the most attention.

Tracking these pages can help your business. It enables you to make changes where needed, and further improve your website to attract more leads and sales. Study the data generated by Google Analytics and other web analytics software to make your business expand.

 

References:

Web Analytics World

About Web Design

Wikipedia

HowStuffWorks.com

Ecommerce Circle

Google Support