To me, studying data is like watching paint dry. It is just not my thing. Unfortunately, analytics is a critical part of managing a successful internet marketing strategy.
Why do you need to measure everything? Because if you do not know that something is broken, you will not know that you need to fix it.
About a month ago I received a call from a wedding officiant in a major metropolitan area. “Chris, I’m not getting any inquiries. I have a brand new website, but nothing is happening. Why?” A quick look at Google Analytics and the numbers showed less than 200 visitor sessions a month. Problem: NO TRAFFIC.
Google Analytics is my go-to tool for understanding what is going on at any website. It shows me visitor sessions, bounce rate, most visited pages, time-on-site, and virtually everything I need to know about how people are using my website.
Google Analytics is free and a part of Google’s full suite of internet marketing tools for website owners managers.
Action Items:
If you have not already done so, you should install and configure both Google Analytics and the Google Search Console for your website. You need a Google account to do this (something@gmail.com).
Use the automated reporting option with Google Analytics to send yourself weekly summaries and end-of-month summaries. But how? Go to any data point in Google Analytics and look for the small email icon at the top of the data. Click the icon and follow the directions! It really is that easy. Personally, I like PDF reports which are easy to read on my smartphone.
Resources:
Auto-scheduling Reports with Google Analytics:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1038573?hl=en
Google Analytics: http://analytics.google.com
Google Search Console: https://www.google.com/webmasters/
