Turning Google Analytics Into Action Items
Google Analytics is one of the best tools out there for collecting data about your website. It has become a common practice for any business with a website to set up a Google Analytics account, which is great. We’re thrilled with this development.
The problem then is that it seems like everyone sets up their Google Analytics account and doesn't know what to do with it. Numerous businesses are sitting there, watching the “visitors” line graph go up or down without knowing what they should do. And that’s understandable, because Google Analytics can be confusing. There’s a whole certification for it. And it has to be renewed after a year. Apparently looking at a report titled “Acquisition Overview” requires certification three times as frequently as operating a forklift.
When you open up Google Analytics for the first time, you’re bombarded with all these graphs and terms that you’ve probably never heard before if web analytics are not part of your everyday work. That’s why we’re here to help you break through some noise, figure out what to look for, and what to do with the information Google Analytics is giving you. It’s actually easier than operating heavy machinery.
Low Conversions or Key Events
A key event, according to Google, is “an event that measures an action that's particularly important to the success of your business.” That means what is considered a key event is largely up to you and is something you can set in Google Analytics. It depends on your goals, but these usually involve filling out a form, navigating to a certain page, or using a specific feature.
Let’s say your goal, your key event, is getting people to fill out the contact form on your website, but you’re not getting nearly as many submissions as you want. A likely problem is that the form is too hidden. Maybe the contact page is only accessible via the footer where a fraction of your users end up seeing it because the rest navigate to another page before scrolling to the bottom. One easy fix is to include a link to the contact page in the navigation at the top of the page. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for users to navigate to your key event. Put up a giant neon sign in their house that says “Go to the Contact Page” if you have to (Mad Genius does not condone leaving neon signs in people's homes without their knowledge). If your key event is the use of a certain feature, call it out in the hero of your homepage and include calls-to-action throughout the site with buttons that link to that page.
What Low Average Engagement Time Could Mean
Engagement time, as defined by Google, is “the amount of time someone spends with your web page in focus or app screen in the foreground, which allows you to measure when users actively use your site or app.” This means the amount of time a given user spends on the site where they’re actually viewing the site. If a user opens up your site the timer starts, but when they navigate to another site, putting yours in the endless ocean of tabs on their browser that stay open forever, the timer stops.
Low engagement time could be an indicator of a few different problems.
The first that comes to mind is slow loading speed. Internet users are impatient. Even the type of person whose blood pressure doesn’t spike even a little when they sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour probably won’t wait more than a couple of seconds for a web page to load. Users could be getting frustrated after a few seconds of loading and then clicking off the page. There are several free tools online where you can test if this is the issue, like pagespeed.web.dev. Entering a URL into this tool will give you a series of Google Lighthouse scores on a scale from one to 100, including one for “performance.” If there are lots of performance issues, that could be the cause of the low engagement.
If there aren’t any issues with loading speed, it could be an issue with the website’s design or user interface. Maybe something about it just isn’t catching people's eye. There are some quick fixes that don’t involve an entire redesign. You might want to consider adding featured images to pages that don’t have them or rewriting headlines to make it more clear what the content is about.
In the most extreme cases, where average engagement time is so low it doesn’t make sense (like one or zero seconds), it could indicate bot traffic. There’s something called a DDoS attack, which is a type of cyberattack where the bad actor tries to overwhelm a server with bot traffic so the site doesn’t work correctly for real users. These types of attacks will usually be accompanied by a large spike in the number of users, or “users” in this case. If the amount of traffic is where you would expect it, then it is likely the result of one of the previously mentioned problems or an issue with how Google Analytics is tracking your site.
Low Clickthrough Rates
Okay this one is cheating because it’s something you’ll find on Google Search Console, which is not Google Analytics, but whatever. Think of it as a bonus. The main user interface of Google Search Console’s “Performance” page is a graph that shows you impressions and clicks over time. When someone sees your website as a result in Google, that’s an impression. When they click on it, that’s a “click.” Clickthrough rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions, or the percentage of people who see your website as a result in Google and click on it.
Clickthrough rates can vary wildly by industry, and naturally, the pages that rank higher in Google’s search results will have higher clickthrough rates, but generally, a healthy sitewide clickthrough rate is somewhere between one and two percent. If it’s significantly lower than that, then that is likely an issue with how your site is appearing in search results. There could be issues with the SEO title (the page name that shows up in Google) or the meta description (the little blurb of text that appears below the SEO title), or they might be missing altogether.
The good news is that these are some of the easiest website fixes you’ll come across. Your website’s content management system most likely has a built-in SEO tool where you can set what appears in Google for each page. For example, most WordPress sites will come with Yoast, which has a layout like this:
The SEO title will automatically populate with the page’s title, but every so often those are too long and get cut off when shown in search results. Make sure you’re not leaving any important information until the end of your SEO titles. Try being more persuasive with your meta descriptions. Meta descriptions are not themselves ranking factors for Google; you don’t have to worry about including keywords here, so you can be a little more creative here.
Your Website’s Function Should Inform Your Goals
Websites can serve countless different functions, so the metrics that are most significant to each are just as varied. It’s critical to understand what your goals are analytics-wise to effectively gauge success.
For example, it’s regularly given that more engagement time is better, but there are circumstances where higher engagement time could mean a bad user experience. For example, if your site is meant to entertain, like YouTube, then higher engagement time is a positive sign because you’re holding user attention. However, if your site is designed to provide users important information, like a WebMD, then higher engagement time could mean that your site is difficult to navigate and you aren’t giving users what they want. It’s not enough to just know what the metrics are; you need to be able to interpret them within the context of your site.
Google Analytics Is Constantly Changing, but Your Goals Aren’t
Google Analytics is incredibly useful, but it is constantly being updated. That can be both good and bad. It’s good because it’s always nice to have new features and metrics that give us more access to information. And it's bad because it’s a lot to keep up with. (That’s probably why the certification only lasts a year.) Anyone who uses Google Analytics should try to stay up-to-date on any updates. The most essential thing is to figure out your goals, the metrics for tracking those goals, and improving in those areas.
Want to talk more about what analytics mean for your website? Or how forklift operators should get re-certified more often? Schedule a meeting and we can chat.