Home » Features » Business tips » Google Analytics – use it!
Business tips

Google Analytics – use it!

You should have a means of tracking your site visitors’ activity, says Nelly Berova. As a bare minimum, you should use Google Analytics – and it has much more to offer – free!

Nelly Berova

Nelly Berova image

Google Analytics is a free website analytics service offered by Google that gives you insights into how users find and use your website. Google Analytics helps you make decisions based on data. But it can be a little overwhelming, as there is a lot of data.

So, to get you started, here are our top three metrics to help you improve your website performance:

#1: Site Content Report

Google Analytics imageWe all know that content is a key component in a website, but how regularly do you analyse its performance?

The Site Content reports show the best performing content on your site, such as top pages, content groupings, landing (entry) pages, and exit pages.

  • For example, under the All Pages tab you can see the top performing pages on your website based on page views, average time on the page and bounce rate.

If you want to find out how well a specific property listing is doing, go to the All Pages tab and enter the URL of the property, without the domain name.

  • For example: /property-for-sale/ aberdeen-park-n5-28290.

Or if you want to see the data for ALL your properties for sale, just enter the parent level, this is the first part of the URL that follows the domain,

  • For example: /property-for-sale.

Content Groupings report allows you to analyse the different types of content on your site against the others. This gives you aggregated data for the content within each group.

  • For example, you can find out how your ‘lettings’ related pages are performing as a whole or in comparison to your ‘sales’ pages.

We find this very useful especially if an agent offers different services, such as lettings, sales, new homes, etc.

Landing Pages and Exit Pages are very useful reports for any agent, showing where users enter/exit your site.

‘Landing Pages’ and ‘Exit Pages’ are one of the most useful reports for any website. It lists which pages users enter and exit the website.

  • For example, if someone’s visit goes like this: Blog Post → Homepage → About Us Page → Exit… the blog would be the landing page as that’s the page they first landed on and the About Us would be the exit page.

Knowing this can help when assessing the marketing performance. To gain a better understanding of which pages perform well through which marketing methods, add a Secondary dimension for Source or Medium.

#2: Demographics and Interests Reports

Those are listed under the Audience reports, which provide information about your website visitors.

The Demographics Overview breaks down your visitors by age and gender.

If you’re tracking goals in Google Analytics, look at the data next to your conversion rates to find out which age groups and gender are mostly likely to convert.

This can help if you’re setting up a new Facebook campaign for example, as you can select an audience similar to your highest converting website visitors.

Creating ads that are specific to these age groups will increase the likelihood of making a conversion as well.

The Interests Overview on the other hand will show you what your website visitors are interested in.

The data in these reports can help you effectively target ads based on specific interests, especially if you use goals to know which interest group is mostly likely to convert.

If you run a blog, you can use this data to target the content toward the main interests of audiences that already come to their website.

We run those reports when we are working to attract a specific segment – for example buyers. By knowing more about the demographics or interests of the buyers some or all of your properties are already attracting and converting, you can tailor your messages and campaigns to attract more of the same.

#3: Mobile Performance Report

The total number of buyers, tenants, landlords or vendors using their mobile phones to browse the web has grown over the years and in many cases is higher than those using desktop devices. So much so that Google even penalises websites that are not mobile-friendly by prioritising those that are.

The mobile performance report shows you how well your site is optimised for mobile and where you need to make improvements.

You can even segment the report further to see which mobile devices or browsers your visitors are using to access your site. This will tell you if your site is performing poorly on some devices.

  • To access this report, go to Audience -> Mobile -> Overview. Pay attention to the bounce rate, time on site and page views to see whether your user experience is failing on one or more mobile channels.

Got a question? Want to improve your website tracking? Book your agency consultation with Nelly.

April 1, 2019

What's your opinion?

Please note: This is a site for professional discussion. Comments will carry your full name and company.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.