Get incredible new insights into your web traffic with Google Analytics.
Do you really know how people find and use your website? For as much talk as we hear about how important an effective website is for generating leads and marketing both your services and the clients you represent, it’s surprising how few agents take an active interest in vital information you can gather about your website with Google Analytics.
First off, if you don’t have Google Analytics on your website, be sure to get your webmaster or IT person to help you install it this week. By adding a tiny snippet of code to your website’s footer, you can begin gathering crucial information about your site’s visitors.
The most recent update to Google Analytics last year provided a bevy of new tools to provide you with insights. From the November, 2011 article on Mashable, this includes:
Ten New Features in Google Analytics
1. Custom dashboards to help you see information that’s most important to you up front
2. Keyword clouds for an at-a-glance idea of your most popular search terms
3. Real-time data to see who’s on your site right now
4. Site speed to help you understand how fast/slow your website is performing (and the subsequent hit your visitors and search engine rankings might experience as a result)
5. Search within Google Analytics to access reports quickly
6. Google Webmaster Tools integration
7. Social engagement with your site, reporting Google+, Facebook data, Twitter, and more
8. Visitor flow to see how visitors enter, experience, and exit your site
9. “Event” tracking to understand when people download reports or meet certain time-on-site goals and benchmarks
10. Multi-channel funnels to show every interaction a visitor had with your site up to 30 days prior to a conversion
While some of this may range outside of your technical expertise, ignorance of the tools available is no defense against the competition! For sophisticated teams, an assistant or webmaster with some Google Analytics chops can help you convert more visitors, capture leads, and follow-up effectively with those leads.
