Where are your leads coming from? Google Analytics will tell you.

Where are your leads coming from? This is a question many businesses ask themselves when starting out. The best way to understand where the leads are coming from is to use a reporting program, the best being Google Analytics. This tool is so popular that it is used on more than half of the sites on the internet. Google Analytics will help you see where exactly your leads are coming from. From there you can change your strategy to target this demographic, improving conversions and your search engine result listing. But how do you know where your leads are coming from, and how can you best capitalise on the Google Analytics data?

Source: Google Analytics 

There are a few things you can do to your website to find out where your leads are coming from and to maximise results:

Set up goals
This is one of Google Analytics most powerful tools, as it allows you to track the actions of users on your website. For such an effective tool, it is also often neglected. To set up goals on your own website, login to Analytics, and then go to Conversions > Goals > Overview. If goals are already set up, you will be able to see an overview with graphed results. If it is not yet set up, you will be informed that goals need to be enabled for the results report to be generated. 

To set up a new goal, simply go to Admin > Goals > New Goals. Google has many templates available if you’re unsure of what goals to select. Conversions is a popular choice.

Create a custom dashboard
Custom dashboards will allow you to easily view an overview of all your data in the one place. There’s no need to be constantly digging through various menus to view your results. To set up your own custom dashboard, login and go to Dashboard > New Dashboard. You can have 20 dashboards at any one time. Dashboards are only available in the view you create them in, so select carefully.

Segment your audience
Chances are you don’t have one demographic visiting your website. You’re going to want to know the details of your visitors in order to correctly align your marketing strategy. You can do this by going to Admin and selecting Segments. This allows you to build customised segments. Using this you’ll be able to find your audience’s age, gender, location, and language, to name a few.

Measure speed
You may be losing new leads because of your website’s speed. It might also be the cause of a low ranking. After all, who wants to be watching a blank white screen waiting for the website to load? Your potential customers will simply leave the website and visit a competitor's instead. Fortunately, using Google Analytics, it’s very simple to measure your website’s speed. Simply go to Behaviour > Site Speed > Overview. This will allow you to see how individual pages of your site are performing and how quickly they load. If your website is loading slowly, there are several useful plugins you can use for improvement, including:

• W3 Total Cache: this is a caching plugin which reduces download times and improves users SEO.
• WP Smush: if your website has lots of images, it will have a negative impact on response time. You can either manually shrink images, or use a plugin such as WP Smush. 

Real Time
This one can end up being a little addictive if you’re excited about tracking your leads. Using Real Time Snapshot does exactly what the name suggests - allows you to see an overview of your site metrics as they’re occurring. You’ll be able to find out not only how many people are on your website, but also where they’re accessing your website from.

Use add-ons
If you really want to make the most of Google Analytics, but also make the data it produces simple, then your best option is to use some add-ons. Best of all, you won’t even have to pay extra for the add ons, you can find plenty for free. Some worth checking out include:

• Google Analytics Spreadsheet: this pairs up your Analytics data with data manipulations tools in Google Spreadsheets. This means you’ll have easier and quicker access to your data.
• com: this is a useful add on if you’re needing more information about the viewers on your website. UserReport uses surveys to ask site visitors questions about their demographics, such as gender and income level, and combines this with your existing Google Analytics data. This will help you know exactly who to target in your marketing campaigns.

Using these tips, you will be able to produce data to clearly see where the leads on your website are coming from, who the viewers are and how you can change your marketing strategy to adapt to this data and increase conversions and rankings.

This was brought to you by Matter Solutions. Matter Solutions are experts in digital marketing with over 15 years of experience in SEO and Webdesign.