Google AdWords Analytics is a great tool which provides insights into how your website is performing and why it's performing that way, allowing you to make changes moving forwards. It also helps you to analyse and improve your Google Adwords campaigns. But using Google Analytics can be intimidating, and it's too tempting just to ignore your Analytics reports if you don't understand them or the benefits they can have for your business. This is a huge mistake – it's important to keep an eye on your Analytics reports, to see where your website is performing well and where improvements can be made. So what should be keeping an eye on?
Search Queries
The Search Queries report shows you valuable data including the keywords your site is currently ranking for, the number of impressions and the click-through rate on pages. Why would you want to know this? Well, monitoring this data can help you to see whether or not the keywords you are using in your campaigns are converting. With pay-per-click advertising, where you pay every time somebody clicks on an ad, using the wrong keywords could mean you're advertising to an audience that just isn't interested in the product or services you're selling. This can cost you money and diminish ROI in the long-term. So it's important to track which keywords are ranking, as well as your click-through rates, so that you can make changes if necessary.
Mobile Usage
With more users than ever before browsing the web from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, it has become empirical for your site to be responsive. This would include a separate website which has been designed for mobile browsing. But it's also important to keep on top of how well your pages are performing on mobile devices. With almost 50% of traffic for many sites emanating from mobile devices, monitoring this data can help you to keep on track of things. Learn more about the power of mobile here - The Importance Of Mobile Websites After Google Mobilegeddon.
Session Information
When it comes to website analytics, what is one of the most important things to know? Well, how about which pages users visit, how long they spend on each page and how much time they spend on your site overall? This is a huge key to how successful your PPC ads are as well as how well-designed and relevant landing pages and web content are on your site. If you're struggling to boost conversion rates, this information could be the key – telling you where you're going wrong and helping you to make changes going forwards that can boost conversions.
Conversion Data
Tracking your conversion rates, the types of conversions you're seeing and the number of conversions is crucial when it comes to analysing and improving your AdWords campaigns. When you can accurately see how each campaign is performing in terms of your conversion rate, you can accurately measure your ROI on your PPC ads and optimise campaigns. You can use custom dimension settings in analytics to track any campaigns that are served through third-party services; for example email campaigns offering discounts.
Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions on your site. It is, therefore, an important metric to measure in Google Adwords Analytics. When somebody leaves your site from the landing page without any interaction, that's classed as a bounce. You want to know why so that you can prevent this from happening repeatedly. Tracking bounce rate lets you see where you're losing traffic, and why. It could be down to an issue with site design or usability, or perhaps you've not provided a CTA or incentive for users to interact with you on the landing page. You can use this metric to improve your ad campaigns, landing pages and website. Learn more on how to reduce bounce rate with this great article - How To Reduce Your Bounce Rate In Google Analytics.
Exit Pages and Page Views
The number of views a page on your site gets is useful – for example, the number of views a landing page gets can be compared against other landing pages and used to determine which is performing the best regarding conversions. But it's also important to know which pages users normally exit your site from – do they drop off on the registration page or just before completing a purchase? Perhaps they exit from your home page because you've included too much information, which can be daunting to read through. Knowledge is power, and knowing how many page views you're getting and where people are exiting your site can help you to improve your website and conversion rate.
Visitor Demographics
We all want to know more about our site's visitors – who are they, where are they in the world, what language do they speak etc? Tracking visitor demographics on your site is a great way to get inside the heads of visitors, which can help you to adjust your ad campaigns to suit different demographics. For example, if you have more customers in Spain than in any other country, you might want to consider ad campaigns in a different language, or including Spanish as a language option on your website.
Keeping an eye on your Google AdWords Analytics is the key to boosting conversion rates and ensuring your B2B business is successful. It may be daunting at first when you're faced with a variety of different reports, but these are the key items to keep an eye on.
