Until recent years, it was tough to see exactly what strategies were working best with visitors to your website. Now you can easily look at which pages get the most traffic, where the traffic is coming from, and how long visitors are staying on your site. Google Analytics has made it simple to see all these stats and more, but did you know you can closely track your buyers’ journey as they navigate through your site?
Determine Your Goals
Every website should have a goal. After all, you know you’re successful until you know what it is you’re trying to achieve. The goal for your website should be specific and actionable. Was your website built to generate more leads, or make more sales? Or perhaps your goal is to get more people to contact your company through phone, email or chat.
Your goal is determined by key performance indicators (KPIs), which are stats like how many items people add to their cart, how much time a visitor stays on your site, or how many times people watch a video or click a link). Tracking these KPIs can give you accurate insight about how well you’re doing in reaching your goal.
Insight with Google Analytics
You can set up Google Analytics to better reflect the goal you choose. When you’re setting up Google Analytics for your site, you’re given the chance to choose between one of their pre-determined goal templates or a custom goal that you define. This can be found within the Admin section of your dashboard. From there, you can choose a goal that best matches with your website.
If your goal is to attract buyers in the awareness stage, when they are realizing their need and conducting very general research, track KPIs like how many visitors are coming to your site and where they’re coming from.
If you’re more focused on bringing in buyers who are in the consideration stage, who are narrowing down their search and doing more specific research, track KPIs like click-through rate of social media posts, emails or ads, and your cost per lead.
In the final stage of the buyers’ journey, when customers are about to make a purchase, you’ll want to track your final cost per acquisition.
These metrics can help you make your website more effective as a means to gather insight about your customers.