3 reasons why you should be paying attention to your website's analytics

Looking at website analytics with all that seemingly complicated data and numbers can be quite daunting to the layman. This data, however, is important to know if your marketing tactics are working and what exactly is driving traffic to your website or social media pages. Therefore, it is important to learn how to interpret this data.

Data is big business, companies like Google and Facebook have long recognized this. They have used data about your browsing habits to increase the experience you have with their software. Similarly you can do so with your business, getting to understand what your customers value the most. Even having a rudimentary understanding of web traffic will be beneficial to the success of the business.

Here are 3 things you should be paying attention to

Traffic Sources

Website analytics can tell you the exact source of each of your visitors. With the help of hard data, you can see exactly how visitors are finding your website and where to concentrate your efforts. You can see over time whether link-earning, social media, or other inbound marketing efforts are paying off. Depending on your industry and the type of goods and services you offer, different marketing strategies may perform better than others.

Demographics of your users

You shouldn’t waste time advertising to the whole world when only a small percentage of the people are actively seeking your products and services. Website analytics can tell you exactly who is searching for keywords and topics related to your site. You can then use that information to target your advertising and/or content according to age, gender, hobbies, educational background and a whole host of other categories. Instead of casting an impossibly wide net, you can connect with the right audience and get a better ROI on your marketing and advertising efforts.

Target the right Locations

Use website analytics to track where your visitors live and how different ads and keywords perform in those different geographic areas. As mentioned before, taking on the entire world as your target audience may not be the best use of your time and money. Fortunately, you analytics tools will show you which countries, states, and even cities in which your visitors are located. You may find that certain areas are the source of a significant number of visitors and decide to cater your content and advertising to that specific location.

Google provides some helpful tutorials on their analytics tools. You should check out their courses on YouTube here :http://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com