5 Google Analytics Tools You Did Not Know Existed

Typically most organizations use Google Analytics to review their website performance. However, Google Analytics is a very advanced tool that offers extensive, rich data at your fingertips. Has your business taken the time to dive deeper into your analytics data?

Here are 5 great tools in Google Analytics that every business should be paying attention to in order to drill down into the data.

1. Demographics

Here you can learn about the age range and gender of people typically viewing your company’s website. The demographic tool gives insights into the people who are looking at your site versus the people who you are actually targeting.

The age/gender of your website visitors can tell you that the organization's target market is off. For example, you thought the target market for women’s shoes was ages 35-44 but the data is showing more women ages 45 and up visiting the site. That alone completely alters marketing and sales strategies and we have only looked into one of the 5 Analytics Tools.

2. Geolocation

Segmenting the data into location can allow your company if it's national, or even global to see exactly where traffic is coming from.  

Looking into what states or countries are visiting your website most allows for better locational targeting of advertisements, marketing, and sales strategies. There is a good chance you already know your top selling state or country but do you know the highest visiting state/country? It could be that a state you are not servicing keeps visiting your site. This could be due to having a competitor in that state but customers end up landing on your page due to better Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or a lot of people want your products and services in the area. Either way, this could mean it's time for expanding the service area of your company. If you’re a global company, stationed in the United States, you may be seeing a lot of traffic coming from Mexico but haven't received any orders. This could be spam or it may mean it's time to look into translating your website for other languages.  

3. Device Traffic: Desktop, Mobile, Tablet

The amount of mobile, desktop or tablet traffic on your website can help determine whether visitors are a part of the “mobile generation”. It is important to provide the optimal user experience for those viewing your site on any device, including mobile devices. Keep in mind that if your website is not responsive it will be demoted by Google, another reason to build a responsive site for visitors.

Having a responsive website allows mobile users to view your website in a scaled down version so that it fits on different sized screens. This helps user experience by making it easier to view the website and navigate throughout. Mobile visitors will be then less likely to bounce off your website with a responsive version.

4. Organic Traffic

Unlike other tools mentioned here, looking at organic traffic helps to see how well your site is performing. If you have implemented any SEO techniques here is where you find out how well they are working.

By looking into organic traffic and comparing to other sources of traffic (Referral, Direct, Social) you’ll be able to tell how well the site is performing. The key will be having the amount of organic traffic equal to your Key Performance Indicators (KPI), meaning you are ranking high in keywords that that your target audience would search for.

When looking deeper into organic traffic you may be able to find out keywords that are bringing visitors to your site. If (not provided) is at the top of the list then most visitors are in some way blocking their data from being tracked. Keywords that are showing up allow you to see which searches are keeping visitors on your site longer. Pages per session, average time on page, and bounce rate (bounce rate is based on 1-page visit) are all indicators of good or poor performing website keywords.

5. Users Flow

The users flow data is one of my favorite tools to use in Google Analytics. It can provide endless possibilities in terms of learning more about the user’s navigation path throughout the website. It is great for global companies because visitors are broken down into countries as well as pages visited.

For e-commerce or lead generation focused websites this will be your best friend. The following steps will be a guide on how to use this tool:

• Choose “Explore Traffic through here” on any box - see image below

• Click on the pencil button above the green box

  • Change the drop down to “contains”

  • In the Expression box use words equal to your quote/lead generation/sale url pages

    • Example: www.xyz.com/quote - you would put the word "quote" in the box

• After applying, click +step on the left or right to add more steps that the visitor took to get to or went to before/after that page

It will filter for every webpage you have on your site that has “quote” in its url based on the example above. This is perfect to see what page is driving the most quote forms and where visitors are going after - to a thank you page if they filled it out or any number of reasons.

This tool can be used for so many options and warrants a blog post of its own one day!

If you have questions on how to use these tools or finding ways to increase website traffic, please contact us to find out how we can help you through SEO.