Why Businesses Should Use Analytics
These days, you don't even need a working knowledge of HTML to make a good looking website. With the various Content Management Systems (CMS) on the market today, much of the heavy lifting of designing your website and making it look good is handled for you. Couple that with a crash course in basic SEO, and you can have a good looking website that draws traffic.
A significant number of businesses stop right there, and that's a mistake. That gets you a functional website, and perhaps even a profitable one, but if you want to take your site to the next level, then you need to make use of an analytics package.
What's So Great About Analytics?
The tangible advantages to you and your business for using some kind of analytics package are almost too many to name. Here are six advantages of using an analytic package.
Low Cost/Free:
There are a great number of solid analytics packages available that are absolutely free to use. Of these, the most common, and probably most widely used is Google Analytics. However, even the paid packages tend to be relatively inexpensive.
Point of Origin:
One of the more common stats that analytics packages gives you access to is the ability to see what nation(s) your traffic is coming from. This can help you specifically by informing you if you should add a language translation to your site for a specific language. For instance, if you note in the stats that a third of your total traffic is coming from France, then adding French translation to your site would see your profits increase because you're anticipating their desires. Everybody likes to read in their native language if given a choice . It's just good customer service, and good customer services gets you repeat business.
Browser Type:
The great "Browser Wars" are over, and there are now only a handful that are used with any regularity. Still, knowing the top 1-2 web browsers being used to view your site gives you another specific testing point. You want to absolutely ensure that your site looks its best on the most commonly used browsers used to visit your site.
Device Type:
This stat is becoming increasingly important, because sometime this year, in 2014, there will be more hand held devices in service than there are people on the planet. Knowing what device is being used to view your site will give you a benchmark to test against. You absolutely want to ensure that your site looks great on top 3-5 devices hitting your site. Never think that your site is "finished." It will always be a work in progress, and this is a great example of that. Check your site's appearance on the devices being used most frequently to visit your pages, and if needs be, redesign your site with a responsive theme that will change its appearance depending on what kind of device it's being viewed on. Here again is the idea of anticipatory customer service.
Bounce Rate:
This is an extremely important metric, because it speaks to user experience, and a good user experience is very important to Google. You can use your analytics tool to see which sites your visitors are going to, then immediately leaving. That's a sure indication that there's something wrong with the page. Either the content is low value, or it's badly optimized, or it's optimized around the wrong keywords and phrases. All of those things are fixable, once you know the problem exists.
Hand in hand with the "Bounce Rate," you'll also get a read of how much time your users are spending on the various pages on your site. More is generally better.
Conversions:
This is really where the rubber hits the road, and is probably one of the most important stats that an analytics package will have to offer you. It will tell you which page an ad was clicked on from. You can use this to identify down to the specific page on your website, which pages are generating clicks that make you money, and which pages are not.
From there, you'll be able to reverse engineer the hows and whys of your "money pages," and create more like them. That's the kind of data that can fatten your bottom line directly.
If you're not already using some type of analytics package, then frankly, you should be. Not doing so is the same as leaving money on the table. Take your business to the next level. Analyze exactly what's making it succeed, and then do more of that.