Using Google Analytics To Discover Nuggets of Opportunity

  • Panning For Gold, Circa 1900

    I recently sat down with a friend from my business networking group to discuss his efforts on the web. He’s got a decent website, that doesn’t need a major design overhaul but could stand for a few tweaks here and there.

    He explained that he expected the majority of his website traffic to come from word of mouth referrals, or as a result of various speaking engagements. I suggested we take a look at his  analytics to see if his assumption could be validated. He had never reviewed the data that Google Analytics provides, and was a little surprised when we started digging into it.

    On the very first page, the dashboard, we made a surprising discovery. The second most popular page on his site was one that he didn’t expect, nor was it one of his primary business offerings but a service that he had stopped focusing on. Next we took a look at the traffic sources, and specifically the keywords that visitors have used to find the site. Four of the top ten keyword phrases were directly tied to the page in question. The rest of the top 10 keyword phrases validated his assumption of how visitors found his site, many were navigational searches looking for his name or that of his business.

    The conversation carried on about his website and I made specific recommendations for improvements. His biggest opportunity was on the page that was getting all the attention from searchers. There was no call to action on the page, or any way for visitors to easily be converted to clients.

    The moral of the story is that analytics shouldn’t be ignored. While they can’t tell the whole story, they are great tools to answer business questions. Who knows, you might even find a new way to make a little more rain.


    April 23rd, 2010 | Alex Hill | View Comments | Tags:

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Alex Hill

  • Andrew Bushnell

    Thanks Alex. Time for me to check my analytics page

  • http://www.smallboxweb.com PJ Christie

    My favorite use of Google Analytics to uncover opportunity is by using the Visitors > Network Properties > Service Providers. Most of the reported networks will be generic connections via cable companies or the like. But it is pretty common to see large businesses who have their own network and universities listed here as well. A quick sort and you can find the ones with higher than average engagements, and now you can be reasonably sure that somebody there, even if they didn't convert, has been on your site and liked what they saw.

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