how to use google analytics to redesign your website

How to use Google Analytics to redesign your website

May 27, 2015Marie Wiese

Agenda

1. The truth about website objectives2. Collecting the right data3. Analyzing the website4. Making decisions5. Making changes6. Reviewing results

Website Objective Misconception

New business opportunity pipelineLead creation

Lead nurturing

Closing

The primary function of your website• Lead creation• Lead nurturing

The primary function of your sales team• Sales process• Closing

First steps in building an opportunity pipeline

Lead creation• Web traffic (SEO/SEM)• Networking• Events• List purchase• Cold calling• Sponsored content

Lead nurture• Email marketing• Social media• Blog• Downloads• Webinars• Workshops

Customer view of the sales process

1. Order taker2. Product expert3. Problem solver4. Strategic advisor

Goal inside your new business opportunity pipeline is to raise profile from order taker to strategic advisor; the higher up you go, the easier it is to close the sale

MEASURE YOUR WEBSITE’S PERFORMANCE AGAINST LEAD NURTURING NOT CLOSED SALES

Confirm website objective

1. Education/thought leadership2. Lead generation3. Lead nurturing4. Sales

Gathering data

• Google Analytics• Back end of your website• Your email marketing tool• Social media stats• Other tracking tools

Google Analytics

The good news…• It’s free• It’s full of important and useful information• It provides markers about search engine optimization

Google Analytics

The bad news…• Its tracking everything about your website• Its difficult to keep on top of changes• Its tricky to manipulate • Google makes you play by their rules

Education/thought leadership

• Being clear on market you serve and problems they face

• Describing in things in a way no one else has done before

• Offering something no one else is offering• Be compelling enough that people will share

Lead generation

• Community building• Getting to know people• Inviting them back

Lead nurturing

• Understanding their needs• Ongoing communication of value• Inviting them to take a next step

Data that helps achieve your goals

Goal: Education

• Time on page• Number of pages visited• Number of visits on blog/education pages

Time on page

• Are people staying on your pages long enough to actually read and engage with your content?

Number of pages visited

• How many pages did people visit per session?

• Did they bounce around and read a bunch of pages?

Page popularity

• What are the most popular pages?

• Are your blog posts popular?

• Are your educational pages popular?

Goal: Lead generation

1. Goal completions2. Geography3. Keywords4. Visits by traffic type5. Referring sites

Goal completions

• Track everything• Map to buyer process• Steps in buyer cycle

Geography

• How important is local search to your business?

• If you’re getting traffic from the wrong place, your keyword strategy is off

Keywords

• Develop a keyword strategy for your business

• What are people searching to find you?

• Determine which words perform

• Track and adjust every 30 days

Visits by traffic types

• Where are people coming from?

• Stop doing things that don’t drive traffic

• See what strategies perform

Referring sites

• Who is driving leads for your business?

• Is there a way to get more?

Goal: Lead nurturing

• New versus returning visitors• Subscribes• Bounce rate• DNS resolution

New versus returning visitors

• If your goal is lead nurturing you want more returning

• If your goal is lead generation you want more new

• Insert pic

Subscribes and email list growth

• Do you have people subscribing through your website?

• Are you growing your email list and frequently engaging with them?

Bounce rate

• Where people enter and leave your site

• Strive to get pages below 50%

• What pages have the highest and what have the lowest? Why?

• Insert pic

DNS Resolution

In-page analytics

In-page analytics

In-page analytics

• Look at where people click• Which part of your navigation is performing?• Does your eye tracking strategy work?

How do I analyze my website?

Case study: marketingcopilot.com

• Launched new homepage November 1, 2014• Homepage analysis done December 31, 2014 (60

days after launch)• Launched new homepage in March 2015

60 Day homepage analysis

Observations

• The main menu items are performing well • Blog has the highest click thru, followed by About

and Resources • We can determine people are interested based on

what they are clicking

• Visitors understand that they are supposed to click on this CTA and are moving to the next step

Observations

• Visitors are not clicking to download the presentation– They don’t understand the value of the presentation or

they want to learn more before downloading

• Visitors might think that they will need to give their contact details and aren’t ready yet– Afraid to click thru

Recommendations

• Remove this section of the homepage and place link to presentation in a different area of the website

• Replace with another download or focus on one choice only

Observation

• Visitors are not clicking on this link

– Maybe they don’t know why they should or don’t see the value in clicking on this link

Recommendation

• Make the CTA more action oriented – What are we providing them? – Why should they click thru?

Observation

• Results should be higher if this is our main CTA• People are jumping off before they see it

Recommendation

• Move this download further up the homepage to support lead generation and lead nurturing

The aha moment…

• Moving from digital to content marketing • Best customer searching for content marketing • Being clear about what we do• Being clear on the path to content marketing

What we did…

• Aligned our keywords to what people wanted not just what we do

• Re-designed homepage based on Google Analytics homepage analysis

• Re-wrote content based on keyword strategy • Re-optimized content based on keyword strategy• Did not change what was working, only changed

what we could prove wasn’t working

Steps to revamp your keyword and content strategy

1. Use keyword tools to examine words2. Create a list of keywords you have opportunity to

rank for that make sense for your website3. Map your keyword strategy to your content map4. Re-optimize your pages for those keywords5. Adjust the name of your blog and blog categories6. Align your social media bios to reflect keywords7. Create editorial calendar to reflect new keywords

The new homepage• Shortened steps• Made CTA more

concise and action oriented with clear value proposition

Before

After

A few results…

• Better search results• Higher quality leads• Easier for current customers to share blog• Easier to understand conversion points

Closing thoughts

1. Don’t make decisions based on opinion – use your data

2. Make an assumption or identify one thing you want to change and test that first

3. Don’t be afraid to test4. Use your analytics often – you don’t need to be an

expert but looking at it once a year doesn’t help you5. 30-60-90 day evaluation cycles work best

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