Ep. 7 Google Analytics Goals for Small Businesses

Brad Post, Create the Movement

Josh Rich, Create the Movement

 

Josh Rich, Create the Movement: Good morning everyone! Thank you for joining us for another edition of Create the Movement Marketing Tip podcast. I’m Josh Rich. I’m here with Brad Post.

Brad Post, Create the Movement: What’s going on Josh? How are you, sir?

J: Doing great Brad. How are you?

B: Good, good.

J: Well, Brad, today we’re going to be talking about Google Analytics, and kind of the benefits of that especially for small businesses. So, I’m going to let you talk about, kind of, getting it set up. And I think the biggest benefit, we’ll say, is it’s free.

B: Absolutely, yeah. So, every single one of our websites that we build we include the Analytics, Google Analytics. Just because, Google Analytics, like you said, is free. You can set it up. It’s very easy. You get a UA code. You put that UA code on their website. We use WordPress, and usually it’s a pretty easy, standard way to put in that UA code. And then, it basically starts tracking, you know, their visits, and you’ll probably go into that a little bit more. It tracks, you know, pretty heavily tracks everything that’s coming to their website, how it’s coming, that type of stuff. And just encourage, just to be able to track that because

J: Right. Because it’s free. It’s pretty easy. Just grab that UA code, put it on the home page, and then let it do its magic. Pretty much.

B: Yeah. Right.

J: Yeah. And you can track basically anything you want to using Google Analytics which is great. One really important thing that everyone should be doing on Google Analytics is using Goals.

B: Okay.

J: There are kind of four main areas that you can use Goals to do

B: And you set that all up within Google Analytics?

J: Yeah. Once you put that UA code in there, you kind of get your account set up. All you have to do, is on the left tab there, you just go to Conversions, and that first one is Goals, hit that drop down area, and then go to Overview. And you can just set up your goals right there.

B: So, our listeners aren’t necessarily looking at Google Analytics right now. But, so if they’re in there, on the left-hand side they have different areas that you can look at.

J: Right. That’s how it is as of today. Two months from now, who knows what it’s going to look like.

B: Yes.

J: But, today that’s how it’s going to go. And so, like I said, there’s four main areas that you can set up goals within Google Analytics. The first one is destination. That’s basically going to track every time that someone goes to your Contact Us page. You’ll set that up there, and it will give you the number of how many people actually go to that page. It will also show you the funnel of where they came from. So, if they went to the Home page, and the About Us page, and then went to the Contact page, it will kind of give you that mapping. You can kind of know how they’re travelling. So, the good thing about that is that you can see, if you really want to drive traffic to that Contact Us page, or to, like, the Buying page, or whatever the goal of your website is, then you can kind of see if you have 10 people that go to your Contact page, and the About Us page, and then to the Contact page. And five people out of that 10 get hung up at the About Us page, you know there’s something wrong with that’s kind of preventing them. Some sort of a roadblock there. So, you can go through and kind of figure that out.

B: Need more of a call to action there.

J: Yes, exactly. Make that destination that you want more clear on kind of that roadblock. So, you can remove that.

B: Okay.

J: The second type is a duration. Which is pretty easy. You just figure out, if it takes 2 minutes for them to read all of that information on the given page that you want to, set that duration goal, so that you know whenever people are hitting that mark, and where they’re missing it.

B: Okay.

J: The third one is going to be pages per visit. So, this is good if you more like an e-commerce site. And you want people to be shopping around looking at different products and what not. So, you know, like, okay, people on average look at five different products before they actually buy one. So, that’s going to be five different pages they’re looking at before they make that conversion.

B: Okay.

J: So, what you do is you set up a goal that you want people to look at five different pages, and that way you know how many people are hitting that. And again it will kind of show you where you’re missing that mark as well. The idea behind this is that you want to know where your problem is, that way you can kind of remove any sort of a roadblock that’s preventing your visitors from getting to that end goal.

B: Okay.

J: And all three of those are, like, really straight forward to set up. You just basically follow the instructions. You put in that URL, the destination page, or you track and put up your time limit, or the number of pages per visit. It’s really intuitive to do. But the last one is what’s known as an event. That’s a little trickier to set up. And we really don’t have time to go over that today. But, and event is like if you want someone to watch a video on your homepage, or if you want them to download some sort of PDF file, or something like that. The way you set that up is you have to go set up a Google Tag Manager account. And then that’ll generate a tag for your account to put on your website. And then, it will generate also an individual tag for that event that you want. And then, you have to go in and set all of that up in Google Analytics.

B: So, it’s more complicated?

J: It’s a lot more involved.

B: Okay.

J: But, then again, if that’s something that you really want, it’s totally worth it. It is doable. There’s great videos out there that you can watch. I think Google Analytics has some videos on their instructional pages that you can view.

B: Okay.

J: Whenever you’re kind of thing about goals, it’s just important to know what you’re website is used for. You know, if it’s to drive traffic, or to drive phone calls, to get leads you going to really want to focus on that Contact page. If you have some sort of submission form to get people to call you back, that’s something that you want to set up. A page you want to make a destination goal for.

B: Right.

J: So, it’s important to have that in mind of what the end goal of your website is. And be thinking about that when you’re setting up these individual goals. And that will help you determine too, which type of goal to set up.

B: Okay. Great. So, just to kind of recap, there’s four different goals that you can set up that they encourage. One is destination – that’s their pages, like web pages. You probably recommend the Home page, About Us, maybe Contact, depending on what they’re trying to do.

J: Yeah, it’s all about what your website is use for.

B: Okay.

J: What the end goal is.

B: And then, number two is duration – time on a page. Which in turn helps their bounce rate. Right?

J: Right. Exactly.

B: Go lower because they’re spending more time on the page. Number three is pages per visit. Again, ties into duration as to how many pages you’d like for them to look at prior to engaging. And then, number four was the events.

J: Yes.

B: And so, for a new user to do Google Analytics. First, set up the UA code. Right?

J: Yes, absolutely.

B: Put it on your website. Start tracking visits. And sometimes too, I would say, I don’t know and you might disagree with me Josh, but maybe give them a month of looking and visits, and helping establish how many people are coming to their site, and what pages they’re going to, and then maybe set goals after that?

J: Yeah. I’d definitely agree with that. I think that will help you adjust. Even just looking at total visits, and looking at what your top landing pages are. Which is all really easy to look at. That should help you too to determine a starting point so you know where you can set your goals to be.

B: Right.

J: I definitely agree with that.

B: And then, making sure just on those pages that there is that call to action. Why is somebody coming to this site? What are you wanting them to do from that site?

J: Yeah.

B: Are you wanting them to purchase, you know, a rub that you put on meat? Or, are you wanting them to

J: Call you?

B: Yeah, call you.

J: Or fill out a contact form.

B: Right.

J: Or download a ticket. Or something like that. I think, just in general, it’s important to be goal oriented with your website both philosophically and practically.

B: Right. Right.

J: So, I think it’s just important to do that.

B: Now, you mentioned, real quick, training. You said Google Analytics has their own kind of training on that?

J: Yeah, it you just Google “how to set up an event” in Google Analytics the first one that’s going to come up is going to be a Google Support. I think it’s www.support.google.com, or something like that.

B: Okay. Some of those I’ve watched. They’re kind of hard to follow. Right?

J: Yeah. They’re a little bit tricky. But if you dig deep enough you can get there.

B: Right.

J: The Tag Manager is pretty involved. I got a little frustrated the first time I was trying to do that. So, don’t get discouraged. And don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it

B: Okay. And then, that’s another thought – asking for help. I think Google Analytics, it’s hard to find their phone number. But once you do you can call them.

J: Definitely write that down. Put it in a safe place.

B: Right. But Analytics actually has a phone number. They have their own department at Google that you can call.

J: Yeah, absolutely.

B: And, you know, the few times I’ve had calls with them – some of them are helpful, some of them are not. I know the AdWords team, I was talking to a friend the other day, they’re awesome.

J: They’re great.

B: Yeah, Analytics team are pretty good. But you can get in touch with them and they can give you training. But like you said also, look at videos. And then, the other thing I was going to say, we talked about this yesterday, when you look at videos for Google Analytics training, it’s like 2012 or 2013. I mean Google Analytics has changed so much in the past few years that you’d recommend something recent?

J: Absolutely, yeah. Because, I mean, yeah, it’s impossible to try to keep up with that. So, definitely make sure it’s a very current video. Otherwise, it’s going to look and operate completely different.

B: Perfect. Anything else Josh?

J: That’s it Brad.

B: All right. You’ve been listening to Create the Movement podcast. Join us for our next edition.