Tapping into the world of Digital Analytics -> 3 tips on optimizing your conversions through using Google Analytics
In this week’s article about the world of Digital Analytics, I will be writing about my favorite marketing discipline, conversion optimization.
What has always made me excited about Product Marketing is that intersection between Product, Sales & Marketing, and there is no better place to practice that than with conversion optimization. So, let’s jump into it!
First things first, what’s CRO?
The acronym “CRO” stands for “Conversion Rate Optimization.” The conversion rate calculation is popular because it can be applied to a wide variety of actions, from list signups to software trials to ecommerce purchases. It is calculated by dividing the number of people taking an action by the number of people who are asked to take an action.
This allows us to understand how well an email or page or ad is performing regardless of how many people see it. We might see 10% more sales this month than last and believe that is good.
But if visitors to our site increased by 20% at the same time, then our conversion rate is actually going down. Sales have increased, yet something is causing us to sell less as a percentage of visits.
In email marketing, for example, there are a number of conversions that take place. Recipients of the emails must open them. Those who open must click on an offer and be brought through to a landing page. Those who see the landing page must take action.
Each of these is a conversion and each can be improved with the right process.
My favorite go-to resource for understanding what CRO is and how to tap into it is: https://cxl.com/conversion-optimization/
Go and check it out!
Using Google Analytics to optimize your Conversions
Google Analytics can be a powerful friend in boosting your conversion rate. You need to find the problems that are affecting your conversion rate first before you start trying to change things. The vast amount of analytics data at your fingertips can help you discover obvious conversion issues, many of which can be quickly resolved.
Gone are the days when a brilliant idea — a result of a brainstorm in the marketing department — was enough. Now you need to know the specific impact of every idea.
You have a strategy? Great, measure it. You added a new feature to your website. Well — how many are using it? Are people using it more likely or less likely to convert?
And while it would probably take me pages and pages to go through all the different features and reports that you can use inside of Google Analytics to start working on your conversions, I will instead offer 5 most valuable advice I’ve learned about the topic:
You need to know what is the problem you are trying to solve
Always approach analytics with a problem: you need to know in advance what you want to know, and what are you going to change/do based on the answer. If nothing, then you don’t need it.
Google Analytics will be your best friend to help you understand ‘where’ ‘what’ and ‘how much’
Follow the data!, they say. Well, truth be told, data won’t tell you anything. It is up to you to pull the insights out of the data. And this requires practice. As with everything — the more time you spend looking at data and trying to make sense of it, the better you’ll get at it.
Here are some of the most useful reports inside of GA that you can use for identifying the problems: 5 Easy Google Analytics Reports to Help You Increase Conversions
Averages lie — look at segments, distributions, comparisons
Most companies market to their average user, most marketers look at average numbers in analytics. But that’s wrong.
So if your buyer #1 is a 12 year girl from Finland, and buyer #2 is a 77 year old dude from Spain, the average is sexually confused 30-something in Austria. That’s the market you think you’re after. See what I mean?
Your “average” conversion rate is 4.2%. But it becomes much more interesting if you look at it per device category segment — desktop, tablet, mobile. You now have a much better picture.
Instead of looking at a static number, look at distributions.
When using Google Analytics always make sure that you are properly segmenting and ordering the data. A couple of very useful features that you can use for that are:
- Segments: A segment is a subset of your Analytics data. For example, of your entire set of users, one segment might be users from a particular country or city. Another segment might be users who purchase a particular line of products or who visit a specific part of your site. Find out more here.
- Secondary Dimensions: According to Google Analytics support, “The Secondary Dimension feature allows you to define a primary dimension and then view that data by a secondary dimension within the same table. For example, in the Referral Traffic report, the default dimension is Source. If you select a secondary dimension of City, then you see the cities from which the referral traffic originated.” This can be extremely valuable when determining anomalies in your data or to better understand what the reports actually mean. Find out more here.
Measure what matters
The job of a metric is to provide actionable insight. You need to be able to look at a metric, ask “so what”? — and have an answer.
I like to see this as a process, so I would usually start by asking myself what are the actions that I want my users taking when they are on the website, then list them out and try to set up measurements inside of the GA account for all of them. Over time, having these metrics will help us build patterns and draw conclusions, but also built further hypothesis on new things we want to measure.
There are 3 ways you can set up tracking of key metrics and objectives inside of your website:
- Use Google Tag Manager to set up event tracking (the best option), naturally requires that you have GTM already set up. Read this article to learn more about tag managers, and read this post on using Google Tag Manager.
- Learn to code, so you can manually add event tracking scripts to your site, wherever needed (but don’t do it, use GTM)
- Tell your developer to set up event tracking for everything on your list.
I wrote extensively about how to set up goals and track results with Google Analytics here, you might want to check it out.
Curious to know more?
Before we wrap up, there are 4 more articles I recommend you to check out on Google Analytics and CRO:
- Google Analytics 101: How To Configure Google Analytics To Get Actionable Data
- Google Analytics 102: How To Set Up Goals, Segments & Events in Google Analytics
- 10 Optimization Experts Share Their Favorite Google Analytics Reports
- 7+ Under-Utilized Google Analytics Reports for Conversion Insights
About the Program
About CXL — CXL Institute is a leading training provider on all things data-driven marketing. You can learn more about CXL by visiting this page.
About Digital Analytics mini degree — The Data Analytics mini degree at CXL is a power-packed program to learn in-depth skills for the Google suite of analytics tools to become a data-driven specialist who can set up any needed tracking and turn data into insights and money. You can learn more about the mini degree by visiting this page.
