What Can Google Analytics Do for You? Part 2

This is part 2 of our series on Google Analytics. Click here for part 1.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what Google Analytics can do for you, it’s important to know what to look for when you’re going over your data. It can be difficult to make sense of all the information that you now have at your fingertips, so consider this a guide to navigating all that Google Analytics has to offer.

User Location

This lets you know where the users who are visiting your site are coming from and gives you a better idea of who you should be targeting. Google Analytics can help you identify where the user is located, so you can better focus your strategy, understand where you should be running ads, and get a better ROI.

Keywords

Keywords are an essential tool to ensure that you’re targeting the correct users and bringing them to your website effectively. They’re also vital for an effective SEO strategy. It’s important to understand the difference between organic keywords and paid keywords. Organic keywords are words that people have typed into Google and found you with, while paid keywords are words that you purposely utilize to increase website traffic.

Pageviews

Pageviews help you get a sense of how many people are visiting your page during a given period of time. To see how many views your page has, just go to Audience > Overview. This allows you to see if your site is gaining momentum, stagnate, or losing visitors.

It’s important to note the difference between pageviews, visits, and unique visitors. Whenever your website is viewed or refreshed, that counts as a “pageview”. A single browsing session is a “visit”, and “unique visitors” are the number of people who have visited your site over a select period of time.

Conversions

A conversion takes place when a user visits your website and actually follows through with the action that you want them to take. You can program certain events, like form submissions, downloads, or visits to a specific page as conversions. This is a great way to get an idea of how effective your user journey is.

Average Session Duration

Another tool that can help you to build a more enjoyable site journey for the user is the average session duration function. Naturally, if a user spends a lot of time on your site it bodes well for how effective it is. If they’re leaving quickly, you may want to look into what you can do to keep them around.

Look Out for Red Flags

Now that you know a bit more about what tools you should utilize while tracking Google Analytics, it’s time to learn about what red flags you should be on the lookout for. If users are visiting your site and leaving after only viewing one page, that indicates a high bounce rate. It may be time to make sure your site is user friendly and entices visitors to hang around for a while. The more time on your page, the better.

Of course, you need site visitors to have a substantial amount of data to track at all, and that won’t be the case if you don’t have many people visiting your site. Directing people to your page is vital so that you can attract as many potential customers as possible and know that your analytics represent a large sample size. Use all of your marketing assets as calls-to-action to your website.

SPARKS! has you covered! For more information about how we can make Google Analytics work for you, please contact SPARKS! Marketing Communications at 866-500-888 or visit https://www.onsparks.com/.

Check back soon for part 3 of our series on how Google Analytics can help take your website to the next level.

What Can Google Analytics Do for You? Part 1

It seems like analytics become a bigger part of how people make decisions every day. Their use has never been more present in sports, so why should business be any different?

Companies are realizing that in order to optimize their outreach efforts, they need to be able to use reliable data that tells them how to best allocate their capital. That’s where Google Analytics comes in. But before the service can be used to your advantage, you have to understand exactly what it is and how it functions.

So, What is It?

Simply put, Google Analytics is a web analytics service that helps you track and report website traffic. This information gives you a better understanding of how visitors find and interact with your website. It can also help you manage your digital marketing decisions. It’s also free, so it won’t take up all of your budget. Google Analytics can help your website boost its performance better than any other online tool out there.

Sounds Great, How Does it Work?

Good question. Essentially, Google Analytics uses a tracking code to collect data about who’s coming to your website, where they’re coming from, how long they’re staying, what they’re looking at, and more. Setting up Google Analytics on your site is easy, and something that we can help you with.

Google Analytics uses a cookie placed in the user’s browser to track their visit to your website. This interaction is recorded, and a staggering amount of information can be gathered from it. You don’t just learn surface level information about the user, you know exactly where they accessed your site from and what device they used to get there. Once they’re there, you can track the journey they take through your site, including what pages they went to and how long they were on each one. It’s vital information that will help you better understand what users want from you.

Google Analytics allows you to compare data from previous periods, such as comparing how many visitors you had in April of 2019 versus how many you had in the same month of 2018. It also shows you what specific channels users reached you through, whether that be organic search (SEO), paid search (PPC), or social media. Want to know how many users are actually following through with what you want them to do on your site and creating a conversion? Google Analytics has you covered.

Seems Pretty Important, Huh?

Absolutely. If your business isn’t taking advantage of all that Google Analytics has to offer, you’re not only passing up an opportunity to learn more about potential customers and clients, you’re also letting your competition get ahead. Being able to use this information to your advantage maximizes the performance of your website and provides the strongest ROI. Discover how effective your online strategies are and whether or not you provide a satisfying user experience so you can build on what’s working or correct what isn’t.

What’s the Catch?

There is no catch. Google Analytics is free, but if you want to take things up a notch there is a Google Analytics 360 option. This option is recommended for larger corporations or companies that feel like they’re reaching the limit of what they can do with the standard Google Analytics service.

There’s no such thing as the perfect platform. Google Analytics relies on JavaScript code and cookies to track information. Unfortunately, not all browsers are compatible with JavaScript, and cookies can be blocked by web browsers and ad blockers.

SPARKS! has you covered! For more information about how we can make Google Analytics work for you, please contact SPARKS! Marketing Communications at 866-500-8088 or visit https://www.onsparks.com/.

Check back soon for part 2 of our series on how Google Analytics can help take your website to the next level.

Google+ to Begin Deleting Accounts and Pages on April 2

It’s been anticipated for months, but now Google has announced an official date for the shutdown of Google+.

On April 2, users of the consumer version of the platform will lose access to their accounts and pages. Starting February 4, users will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities, or events.

Users who wish to save their content will have to download it before that date arrives. Applications like Takeout and Google+ Exporter will come in handy for those who wish to go that route. Downloaders will be given additional data starting in early March 2019.

The complete shutdown timeline includes the Google+ feature for website comments being removed from all sites by March 7, with Google+ comments disappearing from view on April 2. Google+ sign-in buttons will stop working in the next few weeks, but many will be replaced by a Google sign-in button.

The news of a shutdown date comes in the aftermath of a report from The Wall Street Journal that detailed the company’s decision to stay silent despite data from 500,000 Google+ users getting exposed over a three year period. Then, Google made it public that a bug had exposed the personal information of more than 52 million Google+ users. This sped up the platform’s demise, moving the shutdown date up from August 2019 to April 2019.

When Google+ initially announced a tentative April shutdown last December, they recognized “challenges involved in maintaining a successful product” and “the platform’s low usage” as the primary reasons behind its dismantling.

This doesn’t signal the complete disappearance of Google+ from the technological space, however. It’s only the consumer version of the platform that’s being put to rest, not the business version. “While we bring consumer Google+ to a close, we are continuing our investment in Google+ for the enterprise,” wrote David Conway, a product manager at Google. “This means that for those of you who use Google+ as part of G Suite, your accounts will remain active.

The death of Google+ has been imminent for a while, but that doesn’t make it any less inconvenient for frequent users who relied heavily on the platform. Unfortunately, the only avenue that exists for them now is to download their data and take it someplace else.

Google Now Good for Brands

Google Now on Tap Brings Instant Answers

Well, Google has done it again. The search engine behemoth that seemingly has all the answers for every search now allows instantaneous answers to your search.

Searching with Google has always been easy, but with Google Now, it is easier to get the information you want.

As Darren Orf in Gizmodo wrote, “Imagine a mobile personal assistant that is just one long tap away on the home key at any time. You’re in an email that references a restaurant. Taaaaap. Address, menu, hours, and more information in Yelp pops up immediately. Who’s that weird scarred up dude from Mad Max? Oh, you mean Nicholas Hoult? Here’s all of his information plus a link out to IMDb and Flixster. What the fuck is a Escargots de Bourgogne? Let me pronounce it for you correctly and also offer up some recipes if you’re interested.”

What does this mean for brands? With such quick results, consumers will be able to find as much information as they can when looking for what they need. It has basically turned your mobile phone into an enormous search engine. The video below shows more.