There are many reasons to get a new website or update your old one. Maybe you have your objections or it’s been on your to-do list for a while. But in the digital era, it is more important than ever to have a great website that your customers will enjoy using.
We all want an attractive website that grabs the attention of our intended audience, yet the appealing design isn’t the only measure of the success of your website.
In an era of users wanting information fast, it’s important to document your users’ behaviour. Website tracking is vital in measuring what online strategies are working for your business and what needs fixing. Measuring your website traffic allows you to identify visitor trends and provide opportunities. These opportunities help you set goals to improve the effectiveness of your website.
If you’ve had your website built by a web developer, they should have applied the necessary tracking requirements. But if they haven’t, or you’re building your own website here are 5 actions that are vital for the success of your website.
1. Set up Google Analytics… it’s FREE
Once your website is live, there is still plenty of work to do to keep your audience engaged. Google Analytics can provide you with plenty of information, including how many people visit your site, what pages they look at, how long they visit your site and how they got to your website, just to name a few features. Having access to this data can give you an idea of what’s working and keeping your customers engaged. As well as providing you with information on what isn’t working.
2. Create Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics
Out of all the metrics you can access in Google Analytics, conversion tracking is one of the most important. A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who achieved the desired goal on your website. These could include making a purchase, subscribing to your newsletter, filling out a contact form or viewing a certain page. If your website has a low conversion rate its possible that your content isn’t effective or you aren’t attracting the right visitor.
Monitoring and documenting your conversion rate can also tell you if something is wrong with your website. If your conversion rate was to suddenly fall below its average, this may be attributed to an error with your cart, contact form or whatever the goal is.
3. Add Meta Pixel (formally known as the Facebook Pixel) to Website
The Meta pixel (formally known as the Facebook Pixel) allows you to get to know your unique audience. Like Google Analytics, it allows you to understand their behaviours and preferences. The pixel gives data needed to create custom audiences and lookalikes based on site visitors, events or conversions. It can record soft conversions such as duration spent on your site, as well as events like cart abandonment. It can also record hard conversions likes sales or other online goals.
4. Add LinkedIn Insight Tag
Much like Google and Facebook, the LinkedIn Insight Tag gives you an understanding of your website visitors. The Tag is able to give great detail on these visitors, such as job title, seniority, and function; as well as location, company, and industry. This information is key to running successful marketing campaigns. With this information, you can identify the demographics of people taking an interest in your brand.
5. Add HotJar to Your Website
If you haven’t heard of Hotjar, it is a suite of analytical tools that will help you gather “qualitative data” (that’s the stuff that isn’t numbers). It has tools that track heat maps, funnels, user polls, surveys and more.
Hotjar provides fast and visual feedback of what your user’s experience is like. It can tell you what your consumers are engaging and clicking on. You can even watch their recorded session of where they click and what they engage with on your site. It is a great tool to see what is working on your website and what isn’t.
This kind of technology isn’t new. But before Hotjar came along, you had to get many of the features from many different service offerers. Hotjar is an 8-in-1 platform that combines everything under one roof.
Take a look at their product tour (here) and see how Hotjar gives feedback into what your consumers engage with while giving insight into what needs improving.
As an additional point;
It is Vital to Understand What Metrics to Track Each Month.
The vast number of metrics reported through the platforms can be overwhelming. But understanding what metrics are important to your business will help your business grow.
Each platform has different terminology for the metrics reported. But understanding the right metrics will help you identify if your business is growing, shrinking or staying the same.
Some good metrics to watch are how many people are visiting your website/pages? Is it growing or falling each month? How long are they spending on your website or page? How many visitors are converting into customers or completing the desired action? How did they get to your website, organically or through advertising?
Understanding a few metrics will give you a starting point to work from and see where your business is growing and what needs improvement.
Ultimately, what you do with the information is more important. The whole point of recording your online traffic is to gather information and make improvements. By keeping track of your results you will have the ability to monitor any changes or growth. Using the metrics to identify any issues which can be fixed will only increase visitor engagement and experience.
Could your business benefit from a website audit? Take the Greenfish Marketing website health check here.
Greenfish Marketing are specialists at reviewing and implementing changes to your website to help your business grow. Get in touch if you need a hand with the success of your website.
