Ten years ago, it was enough for a business to create a website, cast it out into the wild and merely sit back while the traffic rolled in. But in today’s increasingly technical world with big data seamlessly flowing, it has become essential for small businesses to study their website analytics in order to personalize the experience for visitors, compete with industry behemoths and improve overall business.
For those of you that aren’t studying your website analytics to enhance business, the investment it took to build that website is destined to be a lost cause.
According to a recent study on small businesses’ online strategies, only 25 percent of small businesses use an analytics tool, such as the free Google Analytics service, to measure website performance. That means 75 percent of small businesses are missing opportunities to enhance website traffic, improve sales and drive business forward.
With this decade’s eruption in technology and big data, businesses that don’t know what their audience is doing online are simply flying blind.
Google Analytics is the most popular website statistics service, with a usership of more than 55 percent of the top 10,000 websites last year. This tool and similar services are seeing higher demand as more and more businesses realize the positive impact of using such data. What’s more, Google Analytics is available to businesses at no cost, meaning enterprises and small businesses can benefit just the same.
Small businesses competing with industry giants can leverage website analytics to cater towards particular audiences and direct messages appropriately.
A great example of a company that successfully studied data to increase appeal with its audience is BannerView. They sought to understand what keywords and topics listed in their bi-weekly newsletter most resonated with their subscribers. From the last 12 newsletters, BannerView discovered SEO and online marketing content racked up the most hits and comments, which allowed them to then tailor their newsletters to better fit their audience’s interests.
BannerView gained more responses and was able to develop new content marketing products based on the results of this data alone.
Undoubtedly, with the large volume of data flowing in each day, it’s growing harder to make sense of it all. However, website analytics can offer solutions to your company’s online Web woes. Whether you’re questioning the success of your blog content, wondering if specific content fits better on another page or looking to see which devices viewers use to access your site the most, website analytics are there for you.
Many think of website analytics as a tool that just tells you how many visitors your website receives each day, but that is only one small component of what Web analytics can tell you about the performance of your website.
Building a website and blindly casting it into the vast, expanding online sea is no longer enough. The key to your website’s online success now lies in your ability to unlock its rich user data so you can drive your business initiative - from branding and sales to customer service - through a deep understanding of your audience.
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