As small business owners we set goals and work toward them. It might be aiming to increase sales by 10% in the next financial year, or grow our market share in a new sector of our industry by 5%. Whatever the goal is, how do you know if it’s being achieved? By measuring it.
As one of your business’s most significant marketing tools, your website is an investment of time and resources that have been used to generate a return on that investment. Of course, as a business owner, you want to be able to track its success. Enter Google Analytics.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides an website usage and goal conversion measurement. It allows business owners to view how their new website is being used, and is an invaluable tool for measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) that a business is benefiting from through its web presence.
What sort of information will Google Analytics tell me?
There is a wealth of information available about who is using your website and how they are using it. Statistics can also be displayed for different time spans (e.g. Statistics for a single day, month or the entire life of the website design). For small business owners, the following types of information will be the most valuable:
- Number of people who visited the website
- Number of new visits vs. returning visitors
- Time spent on the website
- Most popular content
- Top search phrases that led people to the website
- How people reached the website (search results, referring websites etc)
- Type of device used to access the website (desktop computer, smart phone etc)
- Number and value of enquires being generated through the websites Call(s) to Action
Take Away
A website is an investment of time and resources into your small business. Like any business goal, in order to measure its success you must be able to track it. The beauty of website usage tracking is that it not only lets you know how your business website is performing, it also provides a wealth of information for making future business decisions.
