Tax season is done. Spring is trying to
start in Michigan. The first quarter of the year is coming to a close,
so it's probably time to review how your Internet marketing efforts are
progressing. Let's assume your website has been up and running for some
time, and you've been faithfully posting to your blog. Has the feedback
concerning the effectiveness of your site been limited to casual
comments from clients or colleagues?
There is a better way.
You need an analytics program. A free
program such as Google Analytics can be incredibly useful. It can track
the traffic to your site and answer many questions such as:
- How many people visit my website?
- How do people get there?
- Which pages are most popular?
- How long do they stay?
- Where do the users live?
- Are they using a mobile device and, if so, which one?
To install Google Analytics, you first
need a Google account—the same one you use for Gmail, Google Drive or
Google+. Go to Google Analytics and click the sign in button in the top
right-hand corner, sign in, and follow the directions to set up
Analytics on your webpage. (If that fails, find a techie type to do it
for you. I did.)
To judge the effectiveness of your
site, you'll want to know how many visitors you have and how long they
stay. The overview report will tell you the number of visitors. This
statistic, called bounce rate, tells you the percentage of people who leave your site after seeing one page.
If your bounce rate is 75 percent, it
means that 75 percent of your visitors left after one page. A bounce
rate of 50 percent or less is considered good. If your rate is 50-70
percent, your site could use revising and perhaps a complete overhaul.
There is a statistic for "average session duration" telling how long
visitors stay on the site. If there is a high bounce rate but visitors
are staying for more than 10 seconds, then maybe a little updating will
do the job.
You may also want to know how visitors
got to your page. Again, Google has the answer. To find an overview of
all your traffic sources click on Acquisition > All Traffic >
Channels. This report tells you the number of people finding you
through:
- Direct—people typing your site name in their browser
- Social networks
- Referral—links from other sites to get to you
- E-mail
- People clicking through from search engines
Want to know how your tweets, Facebook posts, or LinkedIn are working?
Google has a social media report found
under Admin on the main page. Click on Acquisition > Social >
Network Referrals. At a glance, you can see which social network sends
the most visits to your website. The report is available numerically or
as a pie chart.
The Google Analytics data is extensive.
To narrow the results, you can set up goals for your traffic
statistics. Using the goals template found on the main page under Admin,
you can decide which actions you value most: whether it's time on the
page or how visitors found you or if they landed on a particular page on
your website. For example, you can set up a thank you page for a
contact form submission. Once established, Google will then track how
many visitors completed the form and received a thank-you, giving you
the conversion rate, or number of visitors who took action.
Knowing what is working on your website is vital to your marketing campaign. Google Analytics can help you find some answers.
Roberta Gubbins has served as the editor of the Ingham County Legal News.
Since leaving the paper, she provides services as a ghostwriter editing
articles, blogs, and e-blasts for lawyers and law firms. She is the
editor of Briefs, the Ingham County Bar Association e-newsletter, and The Mentor, SBM Master Lawyers Section newsletter.
Read More Clear & Convincing Articles
Helpful Guides
Six Easy Steps to Improve SEO
Using the New Enhanced Member Directory
How to Login and Edit Your Profile
Zeekbeek For Lawyers Page—learn about all the new directory features
How to Contact ZeekBeek Support