Newsletter - Autumn 09

In this issue:

Use Google Analytics to discover what percentage of your visitors turn into enquiries or sales...

Whilst some website owners may already have an inkling about this - very few know these figures precisely.   The following steps outline an easy way using 'Google Analytics' to measure just how many of your web visitors convert into your intended goals... 

1) Google Analytics are free...

Getting started is fairly simple:   
 
1) Register with Google, login and click My Account.
2) From the options shown, choose Analytics.
3) Now add the Website Profile that you want to track, whereupon you will be asked to enter the URL and some other details.
4) Copy the generated Tracking Code into either your web design template, or a file (to be included easily on a number of pages - most web designers can help you out with this).
5) Press Finish.   That's it! You're done with the basics. All you have to do is wait 24 hours to see detailed web visitor tracking information.    Now you can add Goals - and this is where it gets really interesting...

2) Measure Effectiveness Using 'Goals' ...

Decide what constitutes the 'Goal' for users finding your website. It may be a simple registration, a sale, or an enquiry - or pehaps combinations of all three.  

Generally all goals will have a resulting page (or specific URL) that concludes that goal's action (for example, a page showing "Thank you for your enquiry" or "Purchase completed"). These pages are where your goals should be - so make a note of their URLs.

 So the next steps are simply;

1) Go back into Google Analytics and select "Goals".
2) Click on "Set up goals and funnels". The simplest option here is to edit and configure just one Goal initially (up to 4 are possible).
3) Depending how your website is constructed may govern just how the goal should be detected or matched.  The simplest option is "Exact Match" (for which there must be no session or ?parameters in the URL).
4) Enter the last part of the URL (the bit after the domain name) and give it a name to help you recognise it later (such as "Purchase completed" or "Enquiry made").
5) Optionally assign an arbitrary Value to the Goal. 
6) Save your Changes. 

3) And All Will Be Revealed...

 Assuming you have a good flow of visitors coming to your site - you will now be able to see just what pecentage of web visitors achieved the goals you hoped for.   This may then give rise to consider further questions such as: 

"Could this conversion rate realistically be any higher?" 
"Does our website instill an adequate sense of trust to visitors?" 
"Is there anything else we could be doing to influence this rate?"  

Of course there a number of things that can be done to improve all of these areas.
We'll be looking into some of these (as well as using 'SEO' techniques to create a steady flow of visitors) in the coming issues.

Need to discuss this? - call us on 01483 827087 or email us directly.