How to Use Google Analytics to Improve Your Website

They say the best things in life are free. I'd say Google Analytics falls in that category. Are you using it?

Google Analytics is a service that gives you a detailed breakdown of your website traffic. Google provides it for free.  That is to say, for all practical purposes it's free.  There is a 5,000,000 monthly page view limit.  If you're having 5 million visitors to your site every month, paying for web traffic Analytics  falls in the "happy-to-do-it" category.

Being free but useless doesn't qualify anything for "best" though, so what makes it so good?

It can help you improve both your website and visitor satisfaction.

How? Let's look at an example of how you can use the info provided by Analytics:

You've got a mid-size site (16 pages) and on one of those pages you list the employment opportunities that you have at your place of business.  When you view your monthly website traffic breakdown over the course of 6 months you routinely see that your second most visited page is your "employment" page.

You have an opportunity.  

Now you can improve your website by making it easier to navigate to the employment page by placing a section with a link to it on your home page.  Additionally you can make it easier navigate to other import pages from the employment page, or even list sales or updates.  If you improve the ease of navigation from the employment page to other important pages, you'll see their traffic increase as well. Visitors to your site will appreciate the ease of access and your site will be better because of it.

You win.

All websites I build have Google Analytics installed. It's free, it's easy and it provides useful information about your website traffic for you to use. Has your web designer set this up for you?  If not, you're missing out. 

Feel free to contact me if you'd like Analytics set up on your site and have monthly traffic breakdowns emailed to you.  I specialize in affordable website design and it'll cost you less than you think.

Four Advantages a Website has Over Traditional Media

Advertising on the web offers a number of distinct advantages over radio, TV and print.  Let's take a look at four of them. It’s less expensive, it has longevity, it’s flexible and it’s advertising on demand. While a website won’t replace TV, radio and print ads, it can do things that they can’t. It can present a wealth of information about what you sell, provide photos of updated inventory, allow customers to get detailed directions to your business, let customers understand your business history or credentials, and numerous other things – things that are difficult to do within the limitations of traditional media.

It's effective and inexpensive. A website can allow you to reach an enormous audience without taking a huge hit in the wallet. Advertising on the TV, radio or print media is very expensive. With web packages as low as $99, it’s very easy to create high return-on-investment (ROI). Your website will allow you to present much more information about your business over an extended period of time at a fraction of the price you’d pay to present the same information with traditional commercials.  How often do you see radio spots or a year's worth of print advertising sell for $99?

Your website will offer longevity and augment other forms of advertising.  At 99 By Design, all of our plans offer a standard 1 year of hosting so once your site is up, it’s up for a whole year. With radio or TV, once your spots are played – that’s it. While it’s not practical to offer the message “be sure to listen to the radio and watch for our TV ads on such and such date”, if you do advertise on the radio, TV or print, you can maximize your advertising dollars by letting people know that you have a website. Additionally, your website will allow you to expand your advertising message. While advertising on the radio, TV and print do reach a large number of people very quickly, the message that you can provide is limited by the nature of that media. Simply put, you can present much more information with a website than with a 30 second commercial.

It’s advertising on demand and it targets the right audience. Think about how many ads you see and hear in a day – and then think about how many of those ads you follow up with. If you’ve established your presence on the web, when someone searches the internet for your type of business, your site is there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help turn that person into a customer. Advertising your business via TV, radio or print isn’t of much use to people who aren’t currently in the market for the things you offer, but having a website gives you a tool to be there when they are.

Lastly, a website offers flexible advertising. While TV, print and radio advertising are static - meaning when you’ve created your ad, that’s how it will stay - advertising on the web allows you to update your content on demand. Have you added a new service? Did you change your business hours, move or open another location? Are you offering a discount on special inventory? 99 By Design offers several options for updating your web content so you can be sure you’ll have the most current information available for everyone to see.

You can contact me at 99ByDesign.com to get online and grow your business for as low as $99.

You can view my portfolio at http://99bydesign.com/portfolio.html