Website
owners and developers are constantly looking at their Google Analytics to
measure their success. For some entrepreneurs it is essential to know what they are to determine if they are meeting their business goals.
Those goals
might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a
particular file. Google Analytics' approach is to show high-level,
dashboard-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into
the report set.
Google
Analytics analysis can identify poorly performing pages with techniques such as
funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they
stayed on the website and their geographical position. It also provides more
advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.
There are
some players in the modular housing industry that have so many visitors that
they begin looking at just about every detail generated to find ways to stay
engaged longer with the visitor. When this data becomes more intense and the
number of visitors reaches into the thousands these businesses have entered the
realm of Big Data.
Big Data is a
term used to refer to data sets that are too large or complex for traditional
data-processing application software to adequately deal with. Big Data in many
cases offers greater statistical power.
But what good
is all that to a local or even a regional modular home builder that builds
20-40 new homes a year? Does all that date from Google Analytics really mean
that much? You should know if your website is getting enough traffic to support
your continuing business. You should know some other basic stats and that is about
it.
Website
traffic dropping? Then it’s time to refresh it. Give it a new look. Or maybe
your website traffic is generated by your postings on Facebook and the drop is
do to you not posting anything in a month.
Those are
important numbers to know.
Say your area
is hit with a natural disaster. What should you do to let people know your
company is there to build them a new modular home or maybe do repairs? One of
the first things you should do is get on Facebook and tell everyone that you
are available to help.
When you do
that, go to Google Analytics and get a visitor report by week and month. Armed
with those numbers you can track how many people are visiting your website now
that the disaster has passed. If there lot more than usual, keep hitting
Facebook with announcements linked to your website.
If the
numbers are stagnant it could mean that your Facebook postings have not caught
people’s attention and you should change the message.
Analytics are
good for your business and having a working knowledge of them is essential.
However, over
the last couple of years I’ve had many small modular home builders tell me in detail
what their Google numbers are, where they rank and so much other useless
information. I can’t help but wonder if they truly believe that amount of
information is needed to run their business or are have they become addicted to
all of that data.
Why a modular
home builder that builds 20 new homes a year and doesn’t have any plans to
expand really needs to review a hundred datapoints a day is beyond me.
For some
builders and even modular factories that huge amount of data is essential to
keep their business flowing properly. It can predict a lot of patterns in
buying and website visits year after year and if one of those datapoints spikes
or drops it could mean action is needed.
For those
caught up in data and statistics overload there is help for you at GAA (Google
Analytics Anonymous).
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