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On your journey as a small business owner, there will be a few tools that come up that make your life a whole lot easier. One of these tools is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to track traffic and data coming into your website. This information can make a world of difference in how you market your business and build your online presence. You can use the data Analytics collects to help you determine your next steps when it comes to revising your website and marketing to your customers online.

If you don’t have time to do an in-depth study on all that Google Analytics entails, then here are a few quick tips for navigating the analytical side of your business.

Audience demographics

As a business owner, you’re well aware that knowing your audience is key to building your audience and gearing your products or services towards them.

Google Analytics is an extremely helpful tool you can use to understand your audience. Under the ‘Audience’ tab, you can find a general overview that includes the percentage of users divided by country, city and language.

You can also enable the Demographics which can give you more details on the gender and age of your users. Knowing this information can help you determine who exactly is visiting your website and how you can cater your website to them.

Page traffic

While you can see how much traffic your overall website is getting by day, week, or even month, you can also determine which sections of your website are seeing the most traffic. By segmenting your analytics by page or post, you can see where your visitors are navigating to or spending the most time on. This is helpful knowledge as it allows you to see what your visitors are most interested in on your website.

If you received a significant amount of traffic to a specific blog post, for example, you might consider writing a similar blog post on that topic because it’s clear that it’s something your visitors are interested in. Similarly, if your About Page is receiving a lot of traffic, that tells you that your audience is interested in the story and people behind your business and you can build upon that.

Traffic acquisition

In addition to knowing who your audience is and learning where they navigate to on your website, a key piece of helpful information is knowing where your audience is coming from. Under the Acquisition tab, you’ll find ‘Channels.’ It’s here that you’ll be able to see which sources your traffic is coming from. The main channels include Direct, Organic Search, Referral, Social, Paid Search, and Email.

This information can give you a lot of insight into how people are finding your business online. If you’ve put a lot of effort into your SEO marketing, then you’ll likely see significant traffic coming from Organic Search. If you’ve been focused on social media marketing, then you’ll probably see a good amount of traffic from Social.

Bounce rates

Bounce rates can be tricky to understand. Put simply, they are the percentage of visits in which a person leaves your website from any page on your website without browsing further or clicking on any other pages.

Most businesses will likely want their website visitors to navigate to more than one page or blog post. A higher bounce rate (such as anything above 50%) means that many of your visitors aren’t exploring more than one page or blog post before leaving. This is seen as a negative “score” in Google’s eyes, because it assumes that those who leave that quickly didn’t find the information engaging and/or useful.

Focus on improving user experience on pages or posts with high bounce rates, and encourage them to click on other pages through buttons and links.

Optimize Your Website’s Design Today

If the data you see in Google Analytics isn’t what you’d hoped it would be, then it may be time to change up your design and content.

With a liveBooks website, you’ll be able to use our stunning, customizable website templates that look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!

One of the most important marketing tasks you can complete as a small business owner is tracking how well your efforts are doing.

If you’ve heard how important website data and reports can be to your online marketing efforts, but you aren’t exactly sure why, here are some top reasons to begin using Google Analytics — and understanding what all of these numbers mean.

You Can Better Track ROI

ROI (short for return on investment) is an essential part of any great marketing plan, especially for small businesses. With limited budgets, it’s all the more important to understand what you’re getting out of the money you’re spending on search engine advertising, social media ads, email promotions and more!

For example, if you spend $500 per month on a Facebook ad for a few months, but only generate $100 in sales each month, your ROI is pretty low. This can mean your ads aren’t reaching the right people and need to be adjusted, or that the item you’re advertising for isn’t a good fit for a Facebook ad.

In short, tracking ROI can exponentially help you save money in the long run, as well as prove whether or not it’s worth it to keep advertising in the same way over time.

Best and Worst Performing Pages and Posts

By far one of the top benefits of utilizing Google Analytics on a regular basis is knowing how well your website is doing on its own.

Do you have some pages with high traffic and engagement, but others with really poor numbers? Do you have a couple of high-quality blog posts generating a big chunk of your traffic while others struggle to bring in one new viewer each month?

By understanding which pages and blog posts are doing poorly, you can better investigate why they may not be performing as well as other pages and posts and how to fix them over time.

Understanding Your Audience

Want to know which cities or states are most engaged with your website? Interested in data that shows you which services or products you offer are of most interest to them?

Google Analytics can help you uncover more information about your online audience that you may not already know. Even if some of the data confirms your guesses, other numbers may surprise you!

Take a look at the information in the Audience > Geo > Location section to learn about where they are visiting from. You might also explore the Behavior tab to see which pages they are engaged with the most on a regular basis.

Learn More About Google Analytics

Is it all a bit overwhelming? Thankfully, Google offers a free course on Google Analytics to show you all the ins and outs of utilizing the data and tailor the reports to your specific needs!

Optimize Your Website’s Design Today

If the data you see in Google Analytics isn’t what you’d hoped it would be, then it may be time to change up your design and content.

With a liveBooks website, you’ll be able to use our stunning, customizable website templates that look great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!