As a founder, you will likely know your target customer like the back of your hand. Despite this, the rapid developments in technology mean that consumer habits are ever-changing, regardless of your industry.

 

The key to success for any business is identifying a target market and tailoring your business towards them and their behaviour. Google Analytics is perfect for this as it will keep you up to date with your customer’s every move. You can track their average time spent on site and their lifetime value (how much they are worth to your business) alongside key stats like their age, location and gender. Pieced together, this information has the ability to produce a more refined and relevant website that your customers will love.

 

How to: 

 

1. On the GA homepage, click on the ‘Audience’ section in the left hand navigation.

 

Starting with the overview section, you can see the number of ‘sessions’ per day. A session is defined as a user’s behaviour in the time period of 30 minutes, no matter how many actions they take on your website (downloading something, browsing pages etc). It is great to look at how this changes over time, and understand the most popular time for visiting your site. Notice a spike in sessions? Consider why this might be; did you send out an email? Have you organised for a sponsored ad to go live? Look for patterns to understand when your customer likes to look at your website, and make sure your content is posted, or new products are launched in time for the spike in activity each week.

 

2. The overview will also tell you the average number of pages your user looks at.

 

If you notice it looking a little low, consider how your website is laid out. Are CTA’s obvious? Is the top navigation menu readily available? And what page are the customers landing on? The longer a customer stays on site, the better acquainted they will be with your brand and services or product. Therefore, it is better to get them engaged and the more pages they look at, the better.

 

3. As discussed last week, the real insight comes from digging a little deeper.

 

If you notice a dip in the number of page views per session, expand the range of dates you are looking at. Has there been a steady decline over time? Or did interaction plummet on one specific day? You can then compare this information with your activity on site to understand whether there was a particular post or issue that your customers responded negatively to. All learnings are positive; so put together a list of ‘lessons learnt’ particularly following key sales periods, so you can improve next time.

 

Small businesses have to take risks, to put their head above the parapet and be bold sometimes. But it doesn’t always work. However, with Google Analytics you can identify what went wrong, and amend your strategy going forward. The beauty of Google Analytics is its ease; you don’t have to have a team of expert analysts to spot patterns. While you are still starting up, and have a small team (you may even be the sole member!) it is vital that these statistics are considered and acted upon.

 

So go on, explore this section and think about how the data collected can help you and your company! For more information on setting up audiences in GA, click here.

 

Until next week!