Do you find your website statistics and business analytics overwhelming? You're not alone. Most of us business owners don't start a business because we love looking at charts and analyzing data.
We start our businesses to fill a need, make a product, offer a service. Most of us probably start our businesses because we love working with people and want to genuinely help or serve our communities. Rarely would we start a business so we can spend hours looking at complicated graphs and data that makes zero sense.
As always, I'm on a mission to simplify your life as a small business owner. Don't we all need that!
Know Where to Look
The first step is to know where to find your website analytics. If you don't already have Google Analytics setup, I highly recommend it. Though a little complex to setup on the front end, the end result is the most comprehensive. This will give you the most detailed data to work with in analyzing your business.
Your website host may already have their own analytics provided for you. Be sure to look around the back end of your website to find this and know how to keep an eye on it regularly.
Know How to Compare
The next step is the easiest and most valuable... comparison! You don't have to know what every acronym and data point means. Most analytic software provide some kind of color coded percent up or percent down.
Start looking at these colors and digging deeper. See what is "up" and what is "down" over a set period. It will usually compare this week to last week or this month to last month. I always suggest looking at a 30 day span, so that you can compare over a longer average. If you start watching this regularly, you will start to notice patterns and what "up" looks like for you.
View Traffic Sources
This... is... everything! This is the million dollar question. Once you have gotten familiar with looking at these numbers regularly, you can start to ask yourself some important questions.
WHERE is my traffic coming from and where ISN'T my traffic coming from?
It is so VALUABLE to know what is working and what isn't. Then you can know where to spend more (or less) of your precious time and money.
Test Changes
Finally, after you have a good system in place for knowing what your numbers are, THEN you can make changes. Test what paid ads do for your numbers. Test what more posting on social platforms does for your numbers. Try different kinds of engagement and different platforms to see what gives you actual results. All your efforts can be quantified (and qualified) based on real data.
Still not sure?
If you still feel like you are spinning your wheels or just not sure where to start, I'd love to help. We can setup a peace of mind strategy session to work through your analytics together and setup a clear plan for your marketing.
Comment below with what analytics systems you have in place. Share this post with another #mompreneur who could use some website traffic analysis too.