Staying on top of the latest developments in web analytics can be a real challenge. However, it’s vital to the success of any marketer, webmaster, entrepreneur or business of any kind to know how to best leverage analytics data to gain insights into consumer behavior.
There are at least six crucial analytics metrics one should look at when gauging (and improving) success online.
1. Introductions via Organic Search
One of the main axioms of business in any industry is that it’s far more expensive to acquire a customer than it is to keep them. Using organic search to produce viable leads is a good way to cut down on those customer acquisition costs. Google Analytics allows you to see which leads are introduced to your web content from search results.
2. Introductions via Blog Content
Knowing how many people find your site through the search results is a good start. However, it’s often more beneficial to know how many people first find you through content marketing via your blog. Fortunately, Google Analytics and its Advanced Segments feature enables you to determine this figure quickly and easily without a lot of hassle or overhead.
3. Total Content Downloads
Many use content marketing as a lead-in to more in-depth engagement with potential customers. Free downloads like e-books and whitepapers are a popular form of “bait” that marketers on the web use to draw in customers.
You can easily track the downloading of e-books and other freebies to see how effective they are when it comes to converting window shoppers into customers.
4. Visits Due To Paid & Organic Promotion
Many businesses make a stark distinction between paid and organic promotion when determining marketing ROI. The reality is a bit more nuanced. Many leads respond positively to both techniques prior to converting.
Setting up an Advanced Segment in Google Analytics to monitor these responses can help to get the best results from both approaches in tandem.
5. Leads From Social Media
As we all know, using social media to promote high-quality content is a must for savvy marketers these days. Consequently, measuring the leads and introductions to your content that come from social media promotion can help a business to greatly increase mind share in its given niche. Following this metric in Google Analytics should therefore be a priority.
6. Conversions Resulting From SERPs
Knowing with a great degree of certainty how many people find your site or your content through organic SEO is quite important. Even more important to the profitability of any enterprise is knowing how many of those introductions actually result in conversions. Google Analytics makes it easy to pinpoint how many leads actually convert due to great SERPs rankings.
An Analytic a Day
A firm grasp of the fundamentals of analytics as well as the latest developments in the field is critical to getting the most from your marketing efforts. Besides the obvious success indicators like bounce rates and time-on-site, try looking at the above metrics when poring over your data. Your bottom line will thank you in the end.
