An extensive program of analytics work can provide enormously valuable insights into the performance of a website.
Web analytics services usually include Google Analytics along with management and consultation of the results. The information can help you to track and understand your website’s interactivity and can include the following:
- Which keywords are bringing in the traffic (only for cpc on Google)
- Demographics of your website’s visitors – countries, cities, towns
- An overview of the primary drivers of traffic to your site
- Which search engines generate the most traffic
- Referral traffic (visitors sent by 3rd party sites and web resources)
- Social media traffic (Facebook, etc)
- The most and least popular pages on your site
- How visitors move around your site (page paths, entry and exit pages)
- Popularity of any technical data on your site (eg. pdf tracking)
- If targeted calls to action are converting well
- Performance of your pay-per-click ad campaigns
- How well landing pages are performing (if you have any)
- Popularity of any foreign language content on your site
These are just the primary benefits but there’s so much more. For example, you can even detect which browsers people use and whether they are using a pc, mobile tablet or mobile phone. One of the greatest benefits of assessing the % of mobile traffic to a site is that it helps the site owner determine their audience more clearly. If, for example, they have an older website and then notice an increase in mobile traffic, it may be the catalyst for them to decide to upgrade to a mobile responsive website.
You can measure all your website’s online activity using a variety of tools, most notably Google Analytics tracking tools. You will need to understand how best to use this information and how to profit from the incredibly powerful capabilities that Google Analytics provides.
Analytics is certainly not a luxury … it is an essential addition to any serious Internet marketer’s toolbox.