Web analytics and
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), are established marketing tools for those
companies and individuals who want a stronger digital footprint. Obviously, not
all companies have the bandwidth to undertake the more sophisticated elements
of these tools, but for those who have the resources to do so will see a higher
rate in customer conversions and greater market shares.
First, let’s start with
the definition of web analytics. Web analytics in its most fundamental definition
is analyzing the visitor’s behavior on a website. Google Analytics, the premier
web analytic software, uses a variety of methods to create a snapshot of what
consumers are doing online, such as "reach, impressions, page views,
unique page views, sessions, interactions, engagements, attention ratios,
pings, viral scores, buzz scores, and time spent". (Gupta, 2014). These
methods are calculated, analyzed to give a marketer a few insights to questions
like: Which ad is successful in getting a consumer to the website or purchase?
Why is a consumer spending so little or so much time on a particular page? Why
does a potential customer navigate away right before the purchase takes place?
(Sprinkle, 2015).
From insights (not
answers) into these questions marketers can design/change/enhance parts of
their web presence by helping marketers to drive more visitors to their
website, to turn visitors into leads, to increase the conversion rate of
visitors/leads into customers, increase the amount that a customer will spend
on a site, and in general, help a business understand their customers more
thoroughly. (Reed School of Media, 2015a).
Google Analytics has a
variety of reports that will assist a digital marketer in determining the
behavior patterns of their visitors while on the site and also how they got to
this site. How are visitors are arriving onto the website is the genesis of
understanding customer behavior on the website. Utilizing the Channels and
Landing Page report gives a wealth of information regarding how visitors are
entering the website.
The Channel report
shows how the visitor came to the site. It shows the percentage of social
media, organic search, referrals and direct links the various users have used. This
helps the marketer identify the main traffic sources to strengthen those
efforts and to assist those sources that may be lagging. (Oprea, 2012).
The Landing Page is the
first entry point of the visitor, which is not necessarily the home page. The
importance in this report shows what is being most searched, shared, etc. and
is an important tool for visitor acquisition. The Landing Page report in Google
Analytics shows the most highly viewed landing pages over a specific amount of
time - dictated by the user. It shows:
1. "Pages/Visit:
The number of pages that a user visits after landing on the initial page.
The higher the number, the more engagement your landing page is promoting.
2. Avg.
Visit Duration: The average length of time a visitor stays on your website.
This number isn’t entirely accurate for a few reasons, but can be useful as a
way of comparing page performance relative to other pages.
3. %
New Visits: The percentage of visitors that have not previously visited your
website.
4. Bounce
Rate: The percentage of users that arrive on your landing page and leave your
website without viewing any additional pages. A lower bounce rate is
generally the goal." (Harstein, 2012)
This data shows which
pages are successful for future goal conversions and pages that are in need of
improvement. For instance, a retail
ecommerce site should see a spike on a landing page because of a recent new
shoe trend. There could be an increase in average visit duration, page visits,
etc. Secondly, there is also the issue of performance and pages that are in
need of improvement. If there is a high bounce rate for the landing page, this
could mean the information was difficult to locate, the page itself was slow to
load or the landing page was just not engaging. Marketers would need to revisit
this page to see if the keywords/tags were setup properly and look at the
overall design of the page.
Once a visitor is on
the website, Google Analytics can help the marketer turn a visitor into a lead
for future follow-up. There are a variety of ways a website can gather contact
information on a visitor: a visitor can fill out a form for more information on
a topic, sign up for a newsletter or fill out a “contact us” form. Where, Google
Analytics can help offer insights, is through their User Flow and Behavior Flow
reports. The User Flow report begins to segment the visitors by geographical
location and then shows how those visitors travel throughout the website. The
Behavior Flow report is similar but instead of segmenting the visitor by geographic
location the visitors are segmented by landing page and then their website
travel is documented.
These two reports show
paths visitors have taken on the page to the form page. It shows which paths
lead a visitor to fill out the contact information form and which paths lead a
visitor to abandoning the contact form page. Google Analytics can show all this
data, but is up to the marketer to analyze it and comes up with conclusions as
to why a visitor did or did not fill out the contact form. Is that the
newsletter that is posted on the home page is so interesting most visitors
wanted to learn more and that’s why there is a high conversion rate for those
who landed on the home page? Or did the visitor become so confused by the
company’s history page that once they came to the “contact us” form they just
give up and tried another company? (Roberts, 2013). These patterns of behavior
will illuminate trends or show room for improvement for webpages that will help
a marketer to turn these visitors into potential leads.
While, it is important
to generate leads, it is the hope of most marketers to turn leads/visitors into
customers, especially on an ecommerce site. While, there are a variety of
Google Analytic’s reports that would shed insight onto this problem, there are
two reports that would be specifically helpful for an ecommerce website: Mobile
and Ecommerce.
Obviously, the
Ecommerce report makes sense, but why the Mobile Report? There are a lot of
challenges when it comes to mobile site versus a full site with liquid layout.
The factors of cost and time may squash the conversation all together. However, if the business has the ability to
create these sites, then Google Analytics makes this decision easier between
mobile sites or full functioning sites through the Mobile report. This report
gives the number of sessions, the percentage of new sessions, new users, bounce
rate, pages/sessions, average session duration, and goal conversions for the
various devices that are being used to view the website. This means if there is
a high rate of users utilizing mobile devices it would be pertinent for a
business to research whether customers want a mobile site or a full functioning
website. Either way, the data will show a decision needs to be made.
Just because there is
data showing a lot of mobile traffic, there are differences among the various
mobile platforms, especially between tablets and smartphones. In 2014, on Cyber
Monday, mobile web traffic consisted of 28.5 % for smartphones and 12.5% for
tablets. However, the sales metrics between these two devices switch where 19%
of all sales were tablets and 9.1% for smartphones. Of course, looking at the
conversion rates is essential to this process, but the mobile percentages would
help the marketer determine the type of layout/design in order to maximize the
conversion rates for mobile platforms. There are a variety of strategies,
ApplePay, PayPal, etc., that will help in conversion process, but first
learning the percentages of types of mobile users will be a greater asset in knowing
if it is first needed. (Walters, n.d.).
Once a marketer
understands the type of screen their visitor is using, it will assist the
marketer in creating a seamless purchase experience for the customer no matter
the screen size. Even though percentage wise smartphones lag behind tablets in
sales, if only 5% of customers are utilizing a PC to view a site then it would
make sense for a marketer to rethink their purchase path to be more mobile
friendly in order to have higher customer conversions.
The more obvious
report, Ecommerce, will also give insights into turning leads/visitors into
customers. The reports within the Ecommerce heading are Overview, Product Performance,
Sales Performance, Transactions and Time to Purchase. Specifically, the Time to
Purchase report creates very telling data on how to increase conversion because
in the report it shows the number of days and sessions it takes to complete a
purchase, beginning with the most recent campaign to the last finished
transaction. This data gives a snapshot
of how long it takes a customer from their first entry point onto the website
to when they finally make the decision to purchase the item and also how many
sessions. Analysis of these trends may show repeat sessions are a product of a
poorly designed website and it takes customers a few times to get through the
process. (Google Support, n.d. a)
After, a marketer has
increased leads and increased customers utilizing Google Analytics, it is now
time to increase the amount a customer will spend while on the website. Again,
Google Analytics has a number of reports that will help in this process but
specifically, Product Performance and Sales Performance are essential to this
analysis.
The Product Performance
report summarizes the cash flow, price and quantity of items purchased and the
behavior of the customer while looking for a product to purchase. How many
products or webpages did a customer look at before the made the purchase? Was
there indecisiveness of adding and removing products from the shopping cart? What
is particularly telling is how many products were viewed versus how many were
put into the cart, and how many products were viewed versus how many purchased.
Is there a correlation between viewing more items to purchasing more items? If
this is so, the website should encourage more product browsing by advising on
complimentary items to the one being viewed.
The Sales Performance
report is a little more basic and instead shows the transaction revenue
(including shipping and tax), quantity, refund amount and the date. This data
will give a great overview of buying trends and returns. If the marketer wants
to maximize customer’s spending, then decreasing returns is important and understanding
purchase trends will assist marketers in making strategically advantageous
decisions. (Google Support, n.d. b)
In general, Google
Analytics reports will provide a great overview customer’s needs and behaviors,
which will in turn allow the marketer to better respond to customer’s needs.
Not only is it important for a marketer to create a great user experience while
they are on the website, it is also important for a marketer to make it easy
for a customer to find the website utilizing keyword searches. As mentioned
above, the genesis of customer behavior starts with how the customer arrived on
the site. If it is through a search engine keyword search then a marketer took
the time to build search engine optimization.
Search engine
optimization (SEO) is the process of receiving free traffic to a website
through keyword searches on a search engine. The hope for marketers is to have
a high ranking on a search engine results page (SERP). In order for a marketer
to receive a high ranking on a SERP they need to build on-page and off-page
optimization.
On-page optimization is
keywords, URLs, tags and code that reinforce a series of keywords dictated by
the website creator. An example of an on-page optimization technique is to
create keyword-specific tags. A tag, in short, is a keyword. The longer
definition (and more accurate definition) is that it is a keyword associated
with metadata that describes the content, item, and/or image to make it easier
for an individual to search for specific types of content. Metadata can be
included in images and videos. For instance, on a blog, a blogger should define
these keywords and place them in the description, blog title, URL, etc. Or you
can add information via Javascript on the page through “title”, “keywords”,
etc. (Cutroni, 2012).
An example of an
off-page optimization technique is social media. For instance, Facebook and
Twitter are strong indicators for high website rankings. When followers or
interested parties share your link via social media the higher your website
will be for Google's ranking. There is also ranking among the different social
media websites, Facebook has 0.37 and Twitter is 0.25. (Searchmetrics Analysis,
2012 & Reed School of Media, 2015b)
Not only can inbound
links and link sharing on social media help with SEO, but the content on the
social media site can as well. Creating authentic and related content to the
website will also help in keyword and meta tag reinforcement. If due diligence
was performed, the brand/website will have followers who will read this great
content and hopefully share it. It is important to note, Google's crawlers
index websites and social media sites equally. (DeMers, 2015).
This makes sense, the more
the content is spread throughout the web the more indexed it is and this includes
social media. If individuals share a link/story/video that includes the meta
data about the content, the more reliable the link can become and the more it
is noticed by Google's webcrawlers.
What is not noticed by
Google's web crawlers is how many times a link/story/video is “liked”. Eric
Eng, president of Stone Temple Consulting, performed a study where he created
"two different web pages on three different domains, he had friends and
Fiverr users drive likes to each of the pages. Despite each of those pages
being liked nearly 900 times each, Google never crawled are indexed any of the
six pages. So Google clearly is not using Facebook likes to discover or index
new content."
However, as for the
actual counting of the "likes" it does not seem to affect SEO. This
is because the Google webcrawlers cannot see the "Facebook Like" html
and cannot see the originator of the "like". Google wants to see the
source of links so it can assign trust or score to the link, but since they
can't see who posted the link or "like", Google cannot assign a
score. Therefore, it cannot determine if it is a real person or a fake Facebook
profile. (Slegg, 2013)
For
a strong SEO strategy it is important to combine on-page optimization and
off-page optimization in order to gain a higher ranking on a SERP. In order to
do this a marketer needs strong keyword reinforcement through metatags, URLs,
etc. so they search engine indexes the website at a higher level for those
keywords. Also, it is important to have inbound links from social media and
other websites that again reflect the authenticity and value of the website
from our sources.
Once
a person is able to find the website it is up to Google Analytics to give
insights on how to keep visitors coming and to stay interested in the website
to achieve whatever goals the marketers has set forth. SEO can only get the
visitor to the website and it is up to Google Analytics to convert the visitor
to a lead and/or customer, to increase customer spending and in general
understand the needs of the customer.
Web anaytlics and SEO
are powerful tools for a digital marketer to understand another aspect of their
potential customer, current customer and customer behavior. It provides
insights into emerging trends and ways in which their customer’s needs are
evolving.
With this said, is it
important for a company to base decisions on web analytics? Yes, if it is only
a part of the answer. Web analytics is an established tool, but still fairly
young compared to other marketing tactics. So, a company should not disregard
80 years of market trends because the past 2 years of web analytics tell them
to go a new direction. A digital marketer should still understand that web
analytics is still a sample of the marketing mix and to not throw away past
marketing strategies because it is in conflict with the analysis of web traffic.
