Are you a construction marketer who hates using Google Analytics because the information you require is so hard to find?
You’re a marketer who doesn’t have time and would prefer everything you need to know all on one screen?
Well, a Google Analytics dashboard might just solve your problems.
We’ve spent the last couple of days creating a number of dashboards in Google Analytics for the Pauley Creative website and our clients.
By creating a lead generation focused dashboard it allows us and others within the business and our clients to get a quick snapshot view. To see quickly how the website is performing and where leads are coming from.
Users don’t need to go through multiple reports or tabs and nor do they need o keep applying lots of filters to get the info we all need.
So what does this dashboard look like?
Dashboards are accessed and created in the ‘Home’ tab located at the top of the screen in Google Analytics. Dashboards are made up of a number of configured widgets which you can create depending on what you want to know.
The dashboard looks something like this (click to enlarge):
Google Dashboards – A Snapshot of Your Website Performance
Widget 1: Visits
This widget simply tells us how many visits have been generated to the website this month. If the number looks higher than usual we may go and investigate further and likewise if it looks low we may go investigate or if it was you, ask your agency why this number is lower than last month.
Widget 2: Goal Completions
This widget tells us how many goals have been generated on the website. Goals could be anything from enquiries, downloads, sign ups or video plays. [Here is a post which gives you 10 goals which you may want to measure on your own website]. Does this number look healthy considering you have just invested in a new marketing campaign? Low? Why? Ask or investigate further.
Widget 3: Mobile Conversions
Ever wondered how many enquiries or registrations have cous from visitors who have used a mobile device? This widget will tell you exactly how many visitors did and did not use a mobile device to visit the website and completed a goal. This type of information may help you in the planning stage of a mobile app or mobile website. For us anyway, we are just curious to see what sort of percentage of my audience view the website on mobile device. In this case, 331 visitors viewed the website on a mobile device. We may investigate further to find out if it was higher or lower than at this point last year.
Widget 4: Goal Conversion Rate
Quite simply this quickly tells us what percentage of our visitors complete a goal on our website. In this case 1.33% of visitors go onto download information, subscribe or send in an enquiry. With all websites it’s good to have some sort of conversion rate target, the average is 2%. What’s the conversion rate of your website? If you know the conversion rate then ask yourself if it’s higher than last year when you re-design the website.
Widget 5: Top Landing Pages
This widget quickly tells us our top 5 landing pages. As you can see the blog is the top landing page, not the Pauley Creative home page. Wow! Our blog attracts more traffic than the home page? So it should do! We can also now see which blog posts and articles visitors have landed on the most which may prompt us to make sure the right call to actions and goals are on those pages as they are the pages which visitors see first.
Widget 6: Visits and Goal Completions
The big one hence why it’s at the top! This widget compares visits to goal completions and allows us to spot spike in traffic or spikes in conversions from other activity. If I do see a spike then I may go investigate further and find out which channel caused traffic to increase or conversions to increase. Do enquiries go up when traffic increases? No? Well what caused enquiries to increase when traffic was at its normal levels? Good questions to find the answers to.
Widget 7: Top Referrers
This widget tells us which top websites referred us the most traffic. I have also added in a column to show us if any goals had been completed from traffic sent by those sources. It helps us evaluate or investigate external sources further. Are social sites sending you traffic and is any of it converting? Is advertising at a cost on Building Design sending you any traffic and is it converting? Is guest blogging on another website sending you traffic and is it converting?
Widget 8: Blog and Social usdia Ebook Downloads
Another important bit of information of us and for others. Two of the main goals of the Pauley Creative website is to get visitors to sign up for blog updates and to download the construction marketers guide to social media ebook. This widget quickly tells us how many have been generated or completed from the top sources. Again, like top referrers, it helps us evaluate external sources of traffic. For example, the Competitive Advantage blog generated 1 blog sign up this month, should we work together more often? It’s relevant traffic after all. Oh, Facebook is in there too. Should we spend more tius updating our Facebook page? What about Snowarchitects blog? 3 downloads of the ebook! Wow! Dave…more promotion of our ebook please.
Widget 9: Visits by Channel
Wondering which channels your traffic is coming from? This widget will give you percentage split of where your traffic is coming from at a glance. If you have just sent out an email marketing campaign using the correct tagging then you should see a percentage from the ‘other’ pie slice. You may just scan this information to see if anything looks out of the ordinary which may require further looking into. Have you noticed that referral traffic is slowly dwindling?
Widget 10: New Visits from Branded Search Terms
Building a brand is a big thing no? Building a brand by conducting lots of offline marketing and getting people talking about you and speaking at events etc. Well I wonder how many new visits were generated to our website from people who Googled our company name? or your employees nauss? Well this widget will tell you that instantly. You can use this widget to look out for any spikes or long durations where there is a lack of people Googling for your brand. Maybe you need to kick start that brand awareness campaign.
Widget 11: Top Non-Branded Search Terms
Non-branded search terms are the search terms which people use in Google (or any other search engine) which doesn’t include your any brand nauss. This is where SEO couss into play to try and get your website and pages visible in Google to those who do not know of your brand, products or services.
I can quickly see here which search terms are driving the most unbranded traffic and then converting into leads, enquiries or downloads. A new search term may require further investigation to see which other competitors are listed alongside my website/page in Google. What content have they got? Is it any good? What does the page title look like? What does the usta description say?
Widget 12: Visits with Site Searches and Exits
Ok, slightly more specific this one. This tells us how many visits this month resulted in sousone having to use the ‘search’ box on the website. For sousone to use the search box usans they can’t find what they are looking for or the page they landed on didn’t contain the information they were looking for. Not good. This needs fixing if the numbers are high. It needs URGENT attention if people are using the search box and then exiting the site because the information just wasn’t there. In this case, 2 visits out of the 8 resulted in an exit. What did they search for? Can I write a blog post to answer the query they searched for? In your case you may have people looking for part numbers, products, descriptions, discussions, technical data and so on. What do people search for the most and why do they leave the site? Can you fix this and keep them on the site?
Summary
So there you have it. A dashboard which you can quickly access, scan and get the information you and others (your boss!!) require without having to trawl through lots of reports or apply multiple filters taking an age to perform every month.Just a quick glance can tell you how your digital marketing strategy is performing and the channels which are bringing in the leads.
Easy? Yes? No? If you want to know more about dashboard or anything to do with Google Analytics then please do contact us.
