Site Peformance Tracking with Google Analytics

You cannot determine the success of something you don't measure. In today's complicated online marketing environment, a tracking tool like Google Analytics provides insightful and actionable windows through which to view how people navigate through and interact with your website. Regular tracking of site traffic logs for keyword search terms, site performance and visitor trends is key to measuring success.

Remember, pay-per-click companies make money when you spend advertising dollars on ad campaigns. Google Analytics can help you determine which of your ads are costing you money and which are giving you investment returns. Analytics show you which keyword terms are profitable and which are expensive. Analytics can also help you determine "natural search" statistics about your site, which can inform further search engine optimization efforts.

Ongoing monthly monitoring of your website visitor traffic data can provide valuable information that can guide future development and content upgrade to your site. If important product sales pages are not being visited, how can the site design/architecture be changed to fix this? Where in the sales conversion process do people bail out? Are there several paths to the sales page and which delivers more sales? Are you doing "A-B split testing" of product sales pages and what are you doing with the results of the test? How effective are your "landing pages" (for PPC campaigns, email marketing, print advertising, etc) in converting visits to sales? Setting up Google Analytics and monitoring your website performance is an escential part of any serious online marketing or promotion investment.

Since there are a plethora of different reports and "views" into your website performance available with Google Analytics, we recommend you define at least three key business questions about which you choose to have insights and answers. These questions will determine which customized reports and sets of data are most relevant to your own particular needs and concerns. Having a "point person" with whom these reports and insights can be regularly shared and discussed can lead to actionable tasks that can help maximize ROI (return on investment) and result in wise and profitable use of your online (and traditional) marketing budget.

Sample Google Analytics Traffic Sources Report. Shows traffic from just Organic and Paid search.

 

 

 

 

Studio North Marketing, a prominent San Francisco Bay Area graphic design and marketing firm that specializes in brochures, direct mail, advertising, and website design. Studio North Marketing offers: marketing consulting, marketing planning, graphic design, logo design / corporate identity, brochure design, direct mail design, website design, website programming, SEO, print advertising and online search advertising, Google Adwords consulting, event marketing, and trade show marketing. Located in San Francisco and Novato, California, serving San Francisco, the Northbay, the Eastbay and the Southbay.