Measure with Google Analytics.

Google analytics is a free tool that really is a ‘must have’ on any website.

It allows you to collect data that will determine the success of your marketing campaigns.  It will track just about anything a user does and will allow you to pivot if necessary, scale up or reduce your activity.

Why measure?

People purchase goods in stages, so it is important to measure their activity on your website.  This allows you to use that data for informed decisions.  You will see what works (on website or social media campaigns) and you can find out more about customers.  You can measure the quality and quantity of your website visitors and use this to make improvements

How it works

To set up an account you will need a Gmail address. When you set up your account it will provide you with some code that you will need to get your web developer to install onto your website. This code will register the website activity and generate reports.

What to measure

You will see how many times your website was visited each day and the average number of pages people looked at.  It will give you details of where the visitor came from, location in the world and via which channel (social media, organic or paid).   It will also give quite detailed information about your visitors behaviour and interests, this is valuable as you can get real insights into your audience.

Having information such as the most popular pages on the website can help you decide on which content you should re-share on social media.  Knowing where your audience are located can help with specific advertising campaigns. Having information about how many times items were added to baskets but that order was not completed will be important too.   There is a huge amount of data collected using Google Analytics and you should use this valuable information wisely.

Tracking results with Analytics is important.  You are measuring effectiveness in meeting marketing goals and how your efforts are driving revenue for the business.  This data will help drive improvements in future.