Google Sees Your Website Like An MRI

A few years ago I had an increasing pain in my neck and down my arm.  I went to the doctor and he ordered an MRI.  When it was over, the tech gave me a CD and told me to show it to the doc.  Being curious, I plugged it in to my computer and watched what appeared to be an X-Ray movie of my neck and spine.  Interesting, but I couldn’t really tell what was wrong.  (Watch this video as Dr. Corenman explains a neck/spine MRI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO3xmPLrvvM)

After viewing, my doctor said I had a ruptured disk and was leaking the goo (he compared it to the filling in a Twinkie!) that separates the vertebrae. It wasn’t going away and I needed surgery to repair it.  The procedure was scheduled and I spend 3 days in hospital.

For most people, looking at your Google Analytics report of website traffic is about as clear as an medical MRI.  But it can reveal serious problems and opportunities, as well as track the marketing success of your website.

Google Analytics is powerful program that tracks all activity on your website.  http://coppermoonusa.com/analytics.html Google offers it free in exchange for sharing the anonymous data it collects.  The system shows how many visitors per day come to your site, which pages they visited, how long they spend on the each page, what keywords they used to find you, and much, much more.

Why is this of value?  Like the MRI, understanding the meaning of the data will improve your internet marketing performance and can increase your ROI.

Here are two quick examples.  One of our clients averages about 200 visitors to their site per day, and they pay an SEO (search engine optimization) firm to push them to page 1 of Google search.  But when we looked at the analytics, we saw that very few people are coming to their site using the keywords they are paying for. Armed with this data, they adjusted the keyword campaign to drive more traffic to their site.

For most credit unions and banks, visitors frequently come to their site and launch online banking.  Only a small percentage of visitors browse the rest of the site for information or offers.  Consequently, the site must deliver a clear and compelling message.  Many marketing departments spend a great deal of time and energy developing art and text, but have no idea how effective they are.  If there is an auto loan offer?  What percentage of visitors see it?  How many complete an application?  Of those, how many loans are approved?  This information gives you insight into how visitors behave on the site and what can be changed to improve performance.

Google Analytics, installed, properly configured and interpreted, can guide your internet marketing efforts to increase business and ROI.  Without it, measuring your online efforts are nothing more than opinion and blind luck.