This document provides guidance on how to use Google Analytics to redesign a website. It recommends collecting data on website objectives and user behavior to analyze website performance and identify areas for improvement. Key metrics to track include time on page, number of pages visited, goal completions, and traffic sources. The document also presents a case study where analyzing homepage data from Google Analytics revealed opportunities to improve click-through rates and better achieve lead generation objectives by reorganizing content and calls to action. The takeaway is that analytics can identify what is and isn't working to inform content and design changes that drive better results.
How to use Google Analytics to redesign your website
1. How to use Google Analytics
to redesign your website
May 27, 2015
Marie Wiese
2. Agenda
1. The truth about website objectives
2. Collecting the right data
3. Analyzing the website
4. Making decisions
5. Making changes
6. Reviewing results
4. New business opportunity pipeline
Lead creation
Lead nurturing
Sales process
Closing
The primary function of
your website
• Lead creation
• Lead nurturing
The primary function of
your sales team
• Sales process
• Closing
5. 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
6. Customer view of the sales process
1. Order taker
2. Product expert
3. Problem solver
4. 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
9. Gathering data
• Google Analytics
• Back end of your website
• Your email marketing tool
• Social media stats
• Other tracking tools
10. Google Analytics
The good news…
• It’s free
• It’s full of important and useful information
• It provides markers about search engine optimization
11. 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
12. 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
22. Geography
• How important is local
search to your
business?
• If you’re getting traffic
from the wrong place,
your keyword strategy is
off
23. 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
24. Visits by traffic types
• Where are people
coming from?
• Stop doing things that
don’t drive traffic
• See what strategies
perform
25. Referring sites
• Who is driving leads for
your business?
• Is there a way to get
more?
26. Goal: Lead nurturing
• New versus returning visitors
• Subscribes
• Bounce rate
• DNS resolution
27. 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
28. Subscribes and email list growth
• Do you have people subscribing through your
website?
• Are you growing your email list and frequently
engaging with them?
29. 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
35. 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
37. 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
38. • Visitors understand that they are supposed to click
on this CTA and are moving to the next step
39.
40. 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
41. 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
42.
43. 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
44. Recommendation
• Make the CTA more action oriented
– What are we providing them?
– Why should they click thru?
47. Recommendation
• Move this download further up the homepage to
support lead generation and lead nurturing
48. 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
49. 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
50. Steps to revamp your keyword and
content strategy
1. Use keyword tools to examine words
2. Create a list of keywords you have opportunity to
rank for that make sense for your website
3. Map your keyword strategy to your content map
4. Re-optimize your pages for those keywords
5. Adjust the name of your blog and blog categories
6. Align your social media bios to reflect keywords
7. Create editorial calendar to reflect new keywords
57. A few results…
• Better search results
• Higher quality leads
• Easier for current customers to share blog
• Easier to understand conversion points
58.
59. 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 test
4. Use your analytics often – you don’t need to be an
expert but looking at it once a year doesn’t help you
5. 30-60-90 day evaluation cycles work best
If you do not sell a product or service in a highly commoditized category where a product or service can be simply bought on price alone, online, you need to view your new business opportunity pipeline in terms of lead creation and lead nurturing. This is why social selling and email marketing are so important in today’s digital marketing world. People are
Menu items using keywords on Content Marketing
Made the homepage shorter only keeping items that were performing on the previous homepage
Opening CTA making people think about their digital content and if it starts the sales process (more explicit)
- Added content that leads to our services page and what we do and what value we will bring to you if you are struggling with your online content starting the sales process
- Moved the content marketing workbook up further on the homepage with a clearer CTA and reason to download
- Added why you should subscribe to our blog above the blog snippets to increase visitors interest in subscribing and catching their eye before they read the blog posts
- Added the CTA for a free website evaluation as this gets people into the sales cycle and allows us to qualify fairly quickly