Digital Analytics are an oft-neglected but very important marketing tool. Are you using digital analytics as a marketing tool for your business? If not, you should be. Using analytics as the valuable marketing tool it is can mean the difference between an okay website and a great website. It can mean the difference from having a few visitors and/or a few sales to having many visitors and/or sales.

What is working? What isn’t? What are we missing? What can be improved? These are just a few questions to keep in mind when looking at analytics data. Having said that, let’s take a look at what, exactly, digital analytics are and why you should be using them.

What are Digital Analytics?

Digital analytics refers to the act of collecting information from a business’s online presence including web site, e-commerce, and social media activities. The collected information can then be used to analyze  traffic and user interaction to determine whether any changes and improvements should be made on those platforms to improve traffic and user interactions.

There are various types of analytics platforms; some free, some paid. How do you know which analytics platforms to use? This depends on the type of data you want to collect, the types of reports you’d like to see, etc. Today, we are going to look at the free analytics options which are very useful and a great place to start. Many businesses find these options collect all the information they need.

The most popular (and free) analytics platform for websites is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is simple to install and provides a dashboard with a wide range of information. Google Analytics also works in conjunction with Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools.)

Types of Information Collected Through Website Analytics

There is a wide variety of information collected via analytics that can be combined and sorted in various ways to determine website performance. These performance reports are a valuable marketing tool used to determine whether the current website configuration is working or whether changes need to be made to improve traffic, user interactions, and conversions.

There are many types of information collected via analytics but a few key information categories collected via analytics are:

• Traffic – number of visitors to the site
• Traffic Source – what led visitors to your site?
• New vs Returning visitors
• Sessions – each visit to the site is a session
• Average Session Length
• Page Views – number of times a user visits the same page
• Bounce Rate – number of users leaving site without clicking anything

Social Media Analytics

Each social media platform has its own built-in analytics platform. Facebook pages and Instagram use Meta Business Suite to show analytics data while Twitter’s analytics is simply called Twitter Analytics.  YouTube analytics is called Channel Analytics.

Social Media analytics are more about post interactions and reach. This is because Social Media differs from websites in that Social Media marketing is about connecting and interacting with others to build conversations and trust rather than just posting constantly about your business.

As mentioned many times throughout this blog and website, 80% of time spent on Social Media should be interacting with others. Liking and commenting on their posts, retweeting their tweets, etc. Social Media posts and tweets by your business should be more about sharing things that inspire others to interact and comment. Are you using Social Media correctly for your business?

Digital Analytics is the Most Underused Marketing Tool

The bottom line here is that most small businesses don’t even have analytics tools installed and, if they do, they don’t know how to use them as the valuable marketing tool they are. Analytics are crucial to knowing if your digital marketing is working and whether or not to keep doing what you’ve been doing or whether to make changes.

Are you using digital analytics for your business? Are you evaluating them at least quarterly to see if improvements can be made? Contact Carmik Design today for your free marketing evaluation and consultation.