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Website Analytics: How to Measure What Matters · Marketing For Tradies

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If your website has been built by a reputable designer, they should have installed when I ask how many leads are you getting through the site or how effective is your website currently, there's generally like a little bit of a feel of what may be happening right now.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: How effective is that social media presence having on getting traffic to your website?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or is organic search your highest performing in terms of total visitors?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there something else?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes this can be.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Websites That Convert, the podcast where your website stops being a liability and transforms into your greatest asset.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Shannon, and I'm going to guide you through the strategies and insights you need to build a website that not only attracts but converts.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much everyone wants more leads, inquiries, and sales through their website.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I should know I run a digital agency and I have a podcast called Websites That Convert.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So almost every day I'm having conversations with business owners that want exactly that.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: They want more inquiries, leads, and sales through their website.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is that only a very small percentage of business owners know how their website is performing right now.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: When I ask how many leads are you getting through the site or how effective is your website currently, there's generally like a little bit of a feel of what may be happening right now, maybe a number that they pick out as like maybe we're getting this many leads or this many bookings through our site currently.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But only a very, very small percentage of people can tell me exactly how much traffic they're getting, how it's converting, or even know what their existing marketing strategies are doing to help grow their business.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So in this episode, I'm going to teach you how you can look at the current performance of your website, what to look for.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So those key metrics you should be keeping your eye on so that you can know how your website is performing right now, as well as how to make data-driven decisions based on that information or those key metrics and how they are performing.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been in business for a while or you have an existing website, you've probably heard of Google Analytics.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a free tool that Google provides to track the traffic and engagement and conversions, as well as a ton of other metrics related to your website.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: If your website has been built by a reputable designer, they should have installed Google Analytics on your website.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: If not, please get in touch, we'll set it up for you for free.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: But assuming that you have this tool already, which you hopefully do if you have a website right now, then all you need to do is go to analytics.google.com.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's going to bring up your analytics dashboard.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this analytics dashboard is gonna have a ton of different information on it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I want you to do is not just look at all of these different metrics and kind of get a bit confused about what everything is.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just want you to look at these three things.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: The first is how much traffic you are getting right now.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you should see on the dashboard total traffic, it usually will default to the last seven days, but I recommend looking at your total traffic number based on a larger or longer time frame.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So at least 30 days, if not 60 or 90 days.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have this number, you'll understand how many visitors your website is getting right now.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first metric you should be looking at.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: The second metric you need to be looking at inside Google Analytics is where your visitors are coming from.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you should see this on your analytics dashboard, or you can just go to one of the reporting sections and you should be able to find it pretty easily.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, this is one of the key metrics you need to be looking at because it'll tell you what platforms or marketing strategies are working for you right now to get visitors to your website.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the main traffic sources you're going to see are direct.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So these are people that are coming straight to your website and typing in your domain name into the browser.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So they generally will already know your business.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The second is organic search.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this is through Google's free search engine, paid search, so Google Ads, social media, email marketing, referral, and there's a couple of other various ones as well, which are generally pretty small sources.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to tell you where your visitors are coming from.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: This data is really important because it's going to tell you what marketing strategies are working to get exposure and visitors to your site.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this doesn't tell us how those visitors are converting.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the next step I'm going to tell you about.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But this just kind of gives you an indicator of if you're doing a lot of social media, how effective is that social media presence having on getting traffic to your website?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or is organic search your highest performing in terms of total visitors?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there something else?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes this can be quite revealing as to if you're putting a lot of time and energy into certain marketing strategies and it's not actually resulting in website visitors, which means that it cannot result in conversions for you, then you may want to revisit how you're spending your time and money right now.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: The third and final key metric to look at is your conversions.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, everything that you do in your business, you want to be trying to get conversions through your website.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Conversions inside Google Analytics are called key events.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it isn't always set up correctly.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen some really disastrous key events activated on people's websites, which essentially will look like you're getting a lot of conversions or not a lot of conversions, but the actions that people are taking aren't really in line with what you would consider to be a conversion.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really important that key events are set up correctly.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: But if key events are set up correctly, this should be things like submitting a lead form on your website, calling you, sending you an email, something that indicates that that person has become a lead.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you have a higher value conversion event that's available on your website, such as someone purchasing something or making an online booking or getting a quote or something like that, then key events should record the number of people that are taking those actions on your website.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're looking at Google Analytics, there's three key things that I would recommend looking at, and that's total traffic over a long period of time if possible, where that traffic is coming from.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So how are the visitors actually getting there in the first place?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then the key events, how many conversions are happening on your website over that period of time.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this data is interesting to look at, but how do you actually make decisions on it?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you want to get better results with your website, you're going to either need more traffic or a higher converting website.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to figure out whether you have a traffic problem or a conversion problem, you're going to want to take those key events, which are hopefully set up correctly, and divide it by the number of people that have visited your website over that period of time.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that you had 10 key events recorded, so 10 conversions, and you had a thousand visitors to your website over the same period of time.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: That tells us that your website is converting at 1%.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a website that's converting at 1% is not a high converting website.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Generally, when we build websites, we'll create a conversion rate of between 7 to 9%.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this is very high and well above the industry standard.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: It does vary depending on your industry, but if you have a conversion rate below 3%, I would suggest looking at trying to create a better conversion strategy so you can get more of those visitors to your site and convert them into leads.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you do that conversion calculation and you find that your conversion rate is let's say 5 to 7%, that's generally like a good target to have.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that you probably have a traffic problem.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't got enough people visiting your site right now that allows you to get the results that you want because the volume isn't there.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: So in that case, you'd want to look at ways that you can drive more quality traffic to your website.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the best way to do that is through Google Marketing, SEO, and Google Ads.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what I've covered in this episode is how to find the performance metrics of your website, what the three most important metrics are to look for, and then how to make decisions based on those key metrics so you can figure out whether you need more traffic or a higher converting website.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this has been helpful.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, if you need Google Analytics set up on your website, please feel free to get in touch.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: We will set this up for free.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is such an important part of ensuring that you have a website that gets you the results that you want in your business.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to websites that convert.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you found value in this episode, please give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us on all social media.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a service based business owner that's looking to double their website conversions, book a call with my team using the link below.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.