We often find that reviewing the data and performance of a website is either not at the top of a business’s agenda or they aren’t analysing information that is important and relevant to helping them to grow.

As we know, information is power – tracking the performance of a website should be a fundamental for your marketing and growth ambitions to provide you with detailed insight data into how your website contributes to your business strategy.

Google Analytics provides you with intricate real-time insights into how your website is performing, from how people are finding the site, which pages people are landing on, and their behaviour on the website.

Considering the data points and key insights important to your business will enable you to tailor the Google Analytics reports and how you use them. Your analysis needs to have a strategic focus in order for it to have a practical impact on the business, allowing you to make meaningful changes to the site to further optimise and improve performance.

A few suggestions on what you may want to track related to business objectives –

• Monitor the performance of top-selling or new products in order to increase revenue in a particular area.
• Review where and why visitors leave the website when visiting the pages of your lowest-selling items.
• In a B2B environment, tracking the source of enquiries in order to prioritise enhancing particular pages that are either performing well or underperforming.

This will help you to review against your business strategy and KPIs, providing you with a steer on what, where, and why pages need to be improved. This will highlight where content, page structure, SEO, video, photography and calls to action can be introduced to work harder for the site.

Suppose your Google Analytics isn’t being reviewed frequently. You will firstly miss out on opportunities to improve return on investment as well as be unaware of any issues on the site that can be detrimental.

Secondly, when you do afford the time to review a report, it is highly likely that it is outdated as business priorities and growth areas have changed but the site has been left behind and doesn’t reflect the direction you are going in.

Ask yourself “Why don’t I pay attention to Google Analytics?”

It could be a lack of time or knowledge, or that you need help accessing the information. You may also not have the resource or support to analyse and interpret the data and reports.

These are simple fixes as long as it serves you with relevant information that can be utilised within your strategic planning. At that point, it not only becomes valuable, it is also simple to digest and act upon.

One key pitfall, is that time is wasted looking at insights that aren’t important to your business. Therefore, you are viewing a skewed picture of the site, leading to wasted time and effort, as well as missing out on opportunities.

When a Google Analytics report isn’t linked to your business strategy, it is akin to walking into a supermarket without a list, with a high risk of coming out with items you don’t require for the meals you have planned. High chance of wasting your time, effort, and, critically, money.

Work with a partner who can support in creating a strategic focus on how your website needs to play a role in your business strategy. Outlining clear yet challenging objectives that will provide direction to how the site needs to evolve in order to contribute to the business.

Focus attention only on data that helps you to achieve the set of clear goals from the website. Don’t be distracted by data points that have no relevance to what your focus is.

Be open to reviewing and analysing pages from across the site, identifying features and elements that could be replicated on other pages. Concentrate on the “how” and “why” are page is performing so that the characteristics can utilised elsewhere.

Lastly, allocate time on a monthly basis to review reports and insights, helping to maintain a focus to identify emerging trends early, and make regular tweaks and changes to improve performance continuously.