Analytics

Do you understand your audience?

When it comes to running a successful business understanding your audience is the most crucial component. Without being able to understand who is visiting your webpage and purchasing your products there is no way you can possibly grow or leverage your company.

The good news is that there is a simple tool that you can use to help you understand your audience better – Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a great, cheap and effective way to help understand who is visiting your site and how you can maximise your traffic to generate more sales.

Here is how-

Take a look at: Acquisition 

The Acquisition feature on Google Analytics is a great place to start when it comes to understanding your audience. The main purpose of this feature is to provide insight on how users are finding your site.

In the Acquisition Overview section, Google provides statistics on how many users found your site either through social media, search engine results, an external link or through directly entering your URL.

This is useful in determining which marketing strategy is having the best impact on your readers and where your audience is really engaging in your content. For example, if majority of your audience is coming from Pinterest you could determine that:

  • a.) Your audience is visually stimulated or is looking for information quickly
  • b.) Posting on other visual social platforms like Instagram may be beneficial
  • c.) Posting more infographics or images may speak to your audience more effectively

Understanding where your audience is coming from will also help you to understand what your audience may be looking for and what types of marketing is really speaking to them. From here you can then choose whether or not you want to ramp up or ramp down certain campaigns.

Take a look at: Behaviour 

In Google Analytics, the Behaviour section is all about how users act once they get to your site. Here you will be able to determine the most popular pages of your website, your bounce rate and how long users spend on your site before leaving.

Understanding which pages on your website are most popular and which ones your visitors are spending the most time on can help you gain insights into your audience and what they are really looking for.

For example, say your blog post about travel hacking ranks the best and has the most engagement. From this you could determine that your audience is interested in travelling and looking for inspiration on how best to do it without following the mainstream.

This would then allow you to strategise writing more posts about travelling and maybe other life hacks that could be of interest to your audience.

Similarly, you may find that a particular post style or format is ranking better, such as an infographic or a deep, 5000 word analysis article. By understanding which format is doing better you can also gain insights into what your audience is really looking for and what is speaking to them.

Another great insight you can take away from your Behaviour statistics is which posts or pages of your site are not doing well. By taking the time to analyse which pages your audience are spending the least time on and then tweaking these pages to boost engagement, could in turn help you to boost sales.

Take a look at: General Audience

In the Audience tab, Google Analytics shares insights on the type of people who visit your site including their age, gender, location and the type of device they are using.

All of this can be key in determining who your marketing is really reaching and how to better communicate with your audience.

Here are the insights you can collect from each category:

Age and Gender: understanding the main age and gender of your audience is straightforward to interpret. By noting the percentage of men vs. women and the different age brackets, you can learn to tweak your marketing and your voice in order to better cater to your audience. For example, if majority of your users are teenage women you may need to research what values and trends are really appealing to this type of market.

Location: are you running both international and domestic campaigns? Understanding where your audience is coming from will help you to determine how well your marketing strategies are doing and where your audience has been the most receptive. It may also provide a clue as to what time zone your main audience is in and how best you can use this to post content.

Device: understanding what device people most like viewing your website on can help you to tailor the perfect experience. For example, if majority of your audience is using mobile devices, this could be an opportunity for your company to create an app or a highly optimised mobile site.

Understanding who your audience is can help you to better understand what your audience needs and where your company can step in to deliver those needs, and Google Analytics is definitely a great first step.