Small businesses have to use all the resources at their disposal to keep pace with the “big guys” of their respective industries. One of these valuable resources that many small businesses find especially valuable is called Google Analytics.
Read on for more about how Google Analytics can help your small business run more effectively and increase your online sales.
Segment your audience more accurately.
For any type of small business, Google Analytics can give invaluable insights into customers’ online behavior.
If you keep track of your website’s analytics long enough, you’ll start to notice different demographics engage in different browsing patterns as a result.
Particularly, here are some metrics you should look for to identify these patterns.
- Interactions per Visit: How many web pages a user visits in one session.
- Return Visitor Conversion: How many users return to the site a second time.
- Bounce Rate: The rate at which users leave the website without completing any actions.
- Conversion Rate: The rate at which users complete an action on the website.
- Pageviews: How many users visit a webpage.
- Average Session Duration: How long users stay on a page.
Users of different ages and backgrounds will interact with your site a little differently.
So, the more information you have about their behavior, the more accurately you can segment them. Then, you can create more individualized marketing campaigns and get higher conversion rates.
Along with Google Analytics, any small business owner should use a customer data platform (CDP) to track and archive consumer data. It’s important to have easy access to all relevant data to make informed business decisions about your marketing efforts.
Create a more personalized user experience.
With clearly defined audience groups comes a more personalized user experience for each segment. This is extremely important for different age groups, as their tools and technical skills can vary.
For example, younger generations use mobile devices for most of their browsing. So, your online content and marketing campaign must be mobile-optimized to fit their habits.
Personalization is important. But, all of your content still needs to work together to attract as large an audience as possible. For example, Millennials (people aged 23-38 as of 2019) now make up the largest portion of the United States workforce. Thus, most of your online content should have conversational language and a lot of graphics to appeal to them.
You can easily personalize standard marketing tactics, like social media posts and emails, to appeal to a group’s needs and habits.
To do this, include videos, images, language, and pop-culture references that resonate with your target audience. You can also use analytics to:
- identify unusual browsing patterns;
- determine what kind of people participate in those patterns; and
- tailor your content directly to that audience.
Predict future market trends.
Google Analytics lets you monitor trends in your website’s traffic, no matter how small your business and its traffic may be.
Over time, you’ll gain a better understanding of what your customers want, when they want it, and how they want to obtain it. Every business experiences these patterns, no matter their product or service.
For example, your website’s traffic might spike around a specific season or holiday. Google Analytics gives you the information to foresee the spike in plenty of time to prepare your small business with an effective marketing plan.
Cut costs and increase revenue.
With a narrower target audience, more personalized content, and a look at future market trends, you can accomplish two tasks at once.
- Cut costs.
- First, Google Analytics helps identify content that’s too expensive or unnecessary.
- Thus, you can remove anything that isn’t pulling its weight to cut costs and streamline your business model.
- Increase revenue.
- Also, Google Analytics gives you the data to make the right changes to your marketing strategy, encourage sales, and thus increase revenue.
By properly using analytics, businesses have seen a 10% decrease in total costs and an 8% increase in profits on average. Clearly, planning and executing your business plan becomes much more straightforward when you can see real numbers showing your customers’ behaviors.
Support your team.
Analytics also gives you helpful information about your employees’ performance.
You can see which people generate the most traffic and revenue, and which are lagging behind. This data lets you allocate your resources and help struggling employees pick up the slack.
Over time, you should see more consistent productivity across the board and a more supportive work environment.
Optimize your small business with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics gives you raw data about your small business and its relationship with your customers. And with the right information, you can identify unique market segments, create more personalized content to improve the user experience, anticipate market changes, and thus increase sales.
There’s no better time to start optimizing your small business with Google Analytics!
