Website Insights That Can Change Your Business
What would you say is the purpose of your website? The most likely answer is that it’s a place where you can tell potential customers about your products and services, and provide a way for them to purchase or contact you. That’s true–but it’s a very one-sided view of a website’s purpose.
This view has been held for a long time. But smart companies are realizing that their website is actually a place where information flows both ways: from company to customer, and from customer to company. Because when created and built with intention, websites are a veritable wealth of information and insight about leads and customers that you likely can’t get anywhere else.
The insights you gather can make a huge impact in nearly every area of your business. For example, you can:
- Focus your marketing dollars on promoting the right solutions and messaging
- Develop additional products or services that provide in-demand solutions
- Create social media, blogs, white papers and other content around these solutions
- Speak about these topics at events
Here are some questions to keep in mind when looking at your website data.
What search terms or referral sources got them to your site?
While Google’s move a few years ago to encrypt searches made identifying referral keywords a little more challenges, you can still glean a lot of info from Google Analytics and its Search Console tool. Of course, keywords are helpful for optimizing your website’s SEO. But, these keywords also provide a look at the solutions your potential customers are most eagerly searching for.
What pages are being visited the most? The least?
Knowing these answers can tell you everything from what messaging seems to be resonating to what products/services/solutions are in higher demand. For instance, if one of your core products is getting significantly less traffic than others, you may want to consider whether or not to continue offering it. Or maybe the core product still gets a lot of traffic, but that number is declining, indicating that demand for the product may be decreasing. Of course, this warrants a little more digging and testing before you make drastic decisions. A targeted marketing campaign or web page refresh could lift the numbers.
What types of questions are website leads asking?
This is less quantitative and more anecdotal than the other insights, but no less important. Talk to the team who responds to web leads and have them start tracking the questions people are asking them. Look at the terms that are entered in the on-site search box. This can help you determine what things about your product or service aren’t clear, product improvements that can be made, and perhaps how marketing needs to adjust messaging to be clearer about features or benefits.
How do I compare to my competitors’ web performance?
Google Analytics has a helpful little tab called Benchmarks, which enables you to see performance metrics from competitor websites (as long as they are also using GA). While you won’t be able to see deeper metrics like conversions, this can still help your business adjust its digital strategy and see how your efforts pay off.
Where do my visitors live?
Whether you’re a local company or do business on a national scale, knowing where your visitors are can be a tremendous help to you. For example, this can help inform where you may want to open a new location. Or, when looked at with data on referral sources and page views, you could develop more targeted sales and marketing efforts based on what people in different areas seem to be most interested in.
Answering these questions requires that the proper tools be installed, and also that you have a knowledgeable resource to help you make sense of the data. Find an experienced website partner to help you create, implement and continually analyze a website measurement strategy so you can get the most out of your data.