We already explained how website analytics tools can give you a huge amount of data without any additional modifications, and this is a great opportunity for your business.
But in order to get all this data realistically going, you need to make sure you measure your progress toward your specific goals, and that means you'll need to fine-tune your analytics a bit.
To make sure that you keep track of the data that is important to you.
But, how do you define your goals and successful referrals? Reviewing some examples of goals and conversions, and knowing how important their status is, can help.
How do you define your goals and referrals?
You advertise your online activity for a reason, right? Well, anything you hope to achieve with your site can be tracked and measured by web analytics.
Let's start with “conversion”, a commonly used word that describes what happens when a site visitor completes an objective.
We have already learned that website analytics has the ability to segment and tabulate an enormous amount of data about your visitors, and what is happening on your site.
To give you information that helps you get more of these conversions.
Let's go back to the guesthouse example to see how important goals and conversion tracking are! Let's say you log into your web analytics tool and start checking the numbers.
I first noticed that the guest house's website had been visited by 10,000 people last month.
By comparing this number with previous months, I found that the number of your visitors increased from five thousand visitors during the same month last year.
Wonderful thing, isn't it? Well, not necessarily, visits alone do not help your business progress, and without understanding the value of such visits.
It will be really difficult to determine what you are going to do with this information.
The importance of web visits
So, let's try to determine the importance of those visits. You might look at some reports and notice that a visitor spends about two minutes on your website, which is about the same rate as last year, so here we are, learning a little more.
But we still haven't really touched on the commercial value of those visits.
Is two minutes enough for a worthwhile visit? In fact, we don't know the answer.
Just looking at statistics limits our ability to make a decision, as we need data that explicitly shows the value of these visits to business.
Data can really start using your website analytics tool to learn what you can do to continually improve your site.
This takes us back to the first basics of what we want to achieve with the Internet.
For example, one of the reasons for creating a guest house website was so that people could book a room online, so a sure reservation is a goal you'll want to specifically pursue with your website analytics tool. We are done with that goal.
So, what other goals might a guest house business be able to pursue? What other things can people do that are valuable to your business? Well, you might want to tell people how to reach you.
Goals and referrals
How do you configure the analytics tool to measure this? A visit to your site page with a map and directions guide might be a goal you want to follow and consider a conversion to be measured.
Or maybe you want people to subscribe to your newsletter; You even send them special offers, and keep them up to date on the improvements you're making.
If they sign up, it indicates their interest in your guest house, and also gives you an opportunity to reach out to them, which is very valuable.
This means that completing the entry form may be another goal that you are tracking.
There are many types of goals that you can track as conversions using website analytics; To show you the true value of what's going on on your website.
After you define your goals, you will need to set them in your website analytics tool.
The processes for doing this can vary, but they are usually easy, and once you have them, reviewing the reports in your website analytics tool becomes more useful to your business.
Know the importance of their situation
Instead of keeping track of how many visitors you've got or how long you've been on your site, you can review reports that show the things you actually care about.
For example, maybe only two percent of your social media visitors subscribe to your newsletter.
So what can you do? What do you think about placing some publications on social networking sites to offer a coupon with a discount of ten percent when subscribing to newsletters?
Or maybe you discover that your booking rate jumps from three percent to six percent on weekends.
So what's your next step? Adjust your advertising campaigns so that you advertise more heavily on weekends, when people are likely to book.
If you start by understanding all these points and the relationships between them, you have learned what website analysis tools can do for you.
Just remember: you'll get the most out of those tools when you use them to measure your specific goals.
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