You know you are supposed to improve your website, but you don’t know where to start?
The remedy is to start with the data. You don’t want to play hit-or-miss with your site guessing what you think you need. The best you can do today is to draw insights from user behavior; follow this route, and you’ll be headed the right way.
Google Analytics (GA) allows for stress-free analysis of websites data with charts and graphs. About 40 million sites use Google Analytics with more and more merchants adopting the trend every year.
However, despite the high number of users, website owners still don’t have a clue what the analytics of their website mean and how they impact their site success.
Studying user behavior in real-time is the kind of data that you should gather to help steer you in the right direction.
Are you looking to improve your site but have no idea where to start?
Here are a couple of recommendations that will guide you to get specific on statistics that facilitate conversion rate and performance.
How do you level up to your competition?
The benchmark tab is an excellent place to start. It compares your performance with other sites that relate to what you are offering. Understanding the amount of traffic your website is pulling compared to your competitors is not enough; you have to study how long visitors stay engaged in your website compared to your counterparts.
Statistics like average time will help you to determine how you level up to your competition while improving performance and customer service.
What’s the location of your prospects?
It is wrong to assume that traffic only comes from within your vicinity. The internet is a vast network and visitors can be anyone from around the globe.
Do you want to know the exact location of your website visitors?
Go to Audience on the sidebar of google analytics and click on Geo. Next, go to Location
To get a broader view, there is an option of map overlay. However, it does little in providing insight into visitors habits since it covers statistics at a broader perspective. Luckily, you can get a more detailed view when you zoom to the city level. You can do this by clicking on “city” underneath the map.
By studying this data, you can learn and adapt your site to fit the needs of your prospects. For example, it doesn’t mean that your traffic is from a U.S city just because your business is based in the country.
Who is window shopping and who is buying?
If the product or service you are offering is a one time offer, it is important for you to pull more new traffic. However, if you’re offering a repeated process of purchase or service, increasing your loyal customers is critical.
It is easier to get customers to come back than finding new prospects for every purchase. Analytics data can go a long way to help you in figuring out the buyers, return customers and window shoppers. You can do this by integrating referrer information or cookies to your website.
Conclusion
A lot of analytical data is at your disposal. Use it to take your business to another level.
Now that you have a clue of the statistics that really matter, the remaining step is to adapt and change to fit the needs of your visitors like what they care about, where they come from and how they are engaging your site.