5 Tips for Using Analytics in Your Small Business
Knowing the sources and origins of your site’s online business is an crucial piece in competing in today’s very competitive online landscape. Analytics programs can help in showing us the roadmap customers and prospects took to find us, and the actions they made once there.
Not using any, you say? Well, you’ve just identified job one! Until you identify a greater need, it’s okay to start with Google Analytics as it will probably deliver more than you’ll even know how to handle. And, did I mention it’s free?
Once you start collecting data, listed below are five methods to make smarter and more profitable use of it in 2014!
5 Tips for analytics in your small business
- Choose the performance indicators you want – While there are lots of things you can track, it can be too much to handle to bite off a big slice when just starting out. First pay attention to indicators that all of us have to know, like site traffic, conversions, referrals and time on page.
- Understand what your Analytics are telling you – This can be a lot to digest at first. There are a lot of terms and acronyms you might not recognize, so take a moment to understand what you’re looking at. The data will start to be more understandable if you do.
- Set up an automated email report – Many of us will either be too busy or forget to login in regularly to look at the data. Address this by setting up a regular email that sends to the data in a PDF format, so you can act on it!
- You can track more than your site – There are few web properties that can’t accept the JavaScript code required to track for your Analytics. Therefore, be sure you use it in code on all of your significant pages, such as social media, squeeze and landing pages, videos and emails.
- Note key changes in your data – If your site underwent a redesign, or you started a pay per click campaign, or some other significant change occurred that impacted your site, make note of it so you will understand the changes in the data you are viewing. If you don’t understand why that spike in traffic happened, you might find it difficult to act upon!
