The Guide to Using Google Analytics for Small Businesses
Both large and small scale businesses are always on the hunt for customer insights. After all, the only way to increase sales is to know who to sell to and how to sell to them. You can’t possibly stand in stores all day looking at the people coming in and observe their behavior. You can’t do that for all your digital customers, either. This is where Google Analytics comes in.
Google Analytics has the power to keep track of all sorts of data. This includes insights like who visits your shops, what they buy, and what their buying behavior is like. Through this data, you can build a buyer profile to know who you are selling to.
The good news is that creating a Google Analytics account is free. However, you’ll have to put in a little effort to gather the insights that will truly help you improve your sales. Read on as we uncover the key tips on how to use Google Analytics effectively:
Filter the Right Segments
Google Analytics has a segment feature to help you find out how different people interact with your web content. You can filter the segments to find out about the audience relevant to you, such as new users, mobile users and bounced traffic, and so on. You have the option to go even go deeper and look at the geographical location, the browser being used, etc. In fact, these users can further be segmented into those who reached your landing page, put items in their shopping cart, and so on.
Keep Track of Your Brand’s Performance on Social Media
Most small businesses prefer setting up a strong social media presence to connect with their consumers. Google Analytics has a section on Social Media Performance & Trends, which shows how social media users react to your website. It provides data on:
• How many people made purchases after seeing your social media ads
• Those who opened your webpage through social media
• Those who came back later to make a purchase
Set Up Custom Google Analytics Alerts
Set up custom alerts to be notified about any unusual activity on your website. Even if you’re not looking at the data daily, it will inform you in cases when there’s too much sudden site traffic, high bounce rate, surprising levels of social media traffic, etc. These are known as Intelligence Events and can also be used to notify you when you exceed your set sales targets. You can set targets and goals through the Admin section.
You may even be notified by text message or email alerts.
Keep Track of Success/ Failure Rates
Known as Annotations on Google Analytics, you can create digital notes about social media ads that led to a sudden spike in user traffic (or vice versa), and so on. This will help you plan future strategies.
Keep Track of Historical Trends
Google Analytics has a Previous Period option where you can enter your date range and compare user traffic over that time period. With this, even if your business has seasonal traffic, you can observe your performance during those specific months.
Endnote
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The more you use Google Analytics, the more features you’ll find. With these valuable customer insights, you can help your small business maintain stable growth.
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