What is the single most important question you may have to answer for your website?
“Who comes to your website?”
In today’s data driven economy where personalization is simply a must for success, understanding your audience cannot be overemphasized.
Luckily, you have tools like Google Analytics to help you with that. If you are yet to open an analytics account, you better do so as soon as possible. Guessing about who your audience is, where they come from, and what they do on your site, will only take you so far.
Google Analytics can offer valuable information about who your audience is, where they come from, what devices they use, how they behave on your website, and a bunch of other stuff which can help you sharpen your marketing to a fine point.
In other words, Google Analytics is a must have for every marketer, and here are 8 metrics it can give you to better understand your audience:
1. Where Are Your Visitors Coming From?
Ever wondered where your audience is geographically located? Google Analytics can help you drill down to the countries and cities where your audience lives. It does not give information like street addresses though, so privacy is still respected.
The importance of information like this is not hard to see. For example if you are an eCommerce outfit that does not offer deliveries to a particular location where you have a significant audience you may want to consider extending your services there.
2. How Old Is Your Average Visitor?
A person’s behavior and needs are both greatly influenced by their age. When you learn the median age of your website visitors you can gain some insights into their likely buying habits, preferences, needs, lifestyle, and taste. All these can inform can your marketing and targeting efforts.
Google Analytics offers metrics that highlight the percentage of your visitors that fall in various age brackets
3. Gender—Is Your Audience Male or Female?
Google Analytics can break down your visitor demographics to show the percentage that is male and that which is female.
Info like this could inform you how your language and marketing tactic could be amended for greater efficiency. For example, if a majority of your audience is male you may have to invest more in remarketing tactics since men are known to push off purchase decisions more than women.
4. What Percentage of Your Audience Uses Mobile or Desktop?
Yes, even tiny details like this are important and are thus provided. You can use this information for your SEO and Pay-per-Click efforts for targeting and also to see how well the mobile friendly site is working for you.
5. Which Websites Is Your Audience Coming From?
Which websites are giving you the highest referral traffic? Google Analytics can provide this sort of information including the number of visitors referred within a certain timeframe.
6. Which Browser Does Your Audience Favor?
Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge? Analytics can help you learn which percentage of your audience uses Google Chrome and which percentage uses other browsers. Depending on which browser is favored by your audience you may or may not want to make technical changes to your website.
7. Which Page or Content on Your Website is Getting Attention?
Ever bothered to find out where your incoming traffic navigates to or which of your content is performing the best? You can learn a lot about the behavior of your audience from the type of content which they find most interesting. Also, are your visitors reaching the pages you want them to reach?
8. How Many People Are Coming Back to Your Website?
Who doesn’t like repeat traffic? Look into Google Analytics to see whether you are getting any and how many. If the numbers do not look encouraging then you definitely want to make some changes to website and how it engages with visitors.
Conclusion
Google Analytics can be a marketer’s best friend. And one of the best things about it is that it is free and easy to set up. It is one thing to learn all these stats though; and quite another to know what they mean and how you can use them to your advantage. We here at Eternity can help with that. We would love to help you get the desired ROI for your website. Reach out today!
