This document provides guidance on how to use Google Analytics to redesign a website. It recommends collecting data on website objectives and user behavior to analyze website performance and identify areas for improvement. Key metrics to track include time on page, number of pages visited, goal completions, and traffic sources. The document also presents a case study where analyzing homepage data from Google Analytics revealed opportunities to improve click-through rates and better achieve lead generation objectives by reorganizing content and calls to action. The takeaway is that analytics can identify what is and isn't working to inform content and design changes that drive better results.

1. How to use Google Analytics
to redesign your website
May 27, 2015
Marie Wiese

2. Agenda
1. The truth about website objectives
2. Collecting the right data
3. Analyzing the website
4. Making decisions
5. Making changes
6. Reviewing results

3. Website Objective Misconception

4. New business opportunity pipeline
Lead creation
Lead nurturing
Sales process
Closing
The primary function of
your website
• Lead creation
• Lead nurturing
The primary function of
your sales team
• Sales process
• Closing

5. First steps in building an
opportunity pipeline
Lead creation
• Web traffic (SEO/SEM)
• Networking
• Events
• List purchase
• Cold calling
• Sponsored content
Lead nurture
• Email marketing
• Social media
• Blog
• Downloads
• Webinars
• Workshops

6. Customer view of the sales process
1. Order taker
2. Product expert
3. Problem solver
4. Strategic advisor
 Goal inside your new business opportunity pipeline is to raise profile from
order taker to strategic advisor; the higher up you go, the easier it is to
close the sale

7. MEASURE YOUR WEBSITE’S
PERFORMANCE AGAINST
LEAD NURTURING NOT
CLOSED SALES

8. Confirm website objective
1. Education/thought leadership
2. Lead generation
3. Lead nurturing
4. Sales

9. Gathering data
• Google Analytics
• Back end of your website
• Your email marketing tool
• Social media stats
• Other tracking tools

10. Google Analytics
The good news…
• It’s free
• It’s full of important and useful information
• It provides markers about search engine optimization

11. Google Analytics
The bad news…
• Its tracking everything about your website
• Its difficult to keep on top of changes
• Its tricky to manipulate
• Google makes you play by their rules

12. Education/thought leadership
• Being clear on market you serve and problems they
face
• Describing in things in a way no one else has done
before
• Offering something no one else is offering
• Be compelling enough that people will share

13. Lead generation
• Community building
• Getting to know people
• Inviting them back

14. Lead nurturing
• Understanding their needs
• Ongoing communication of value
• Inviting them to take a next step

15. Data that helps achieve your
goals

16. Goal: Education
• Time on page
• Number of pages visited
• Number of visits on blog/education pages

17. Time on page
• Are people staying on your pages long enough to
actually read and engage with your content?

18. Number of pages visited
• How many pages did
people visit per
session?
• Did they bounce around
and read a bunch of
pages?

19. Page popularity
• What are the most popular
pages?
• Are your blog posts
popular?
• Are your educational pages
popular?

20. Goal: Lead generation
1. Goal completions
2. Geography
3. Keywords
4. Visits by traffic type
5. Referring sites

21. Goal completions
• Track everything
• Map to buyer process
• Steps in buyer cycle

22. Geography
• How important is local
search to your
business?
• If you’re getting traffic
from the wrong place,
your keyword strategy is
off

23. Keywords
• Develop a keyword
strategy for your
business
• What are people
searching to find you?
• Determine which words
perform
• Track and adjust every
30 days

24. Visits by traffic types
• Where are people
coming from?
• Stop doing things that
don’t drive traffic
• See what strategies
perform

25. Referring sites
• Who is driving leads for
your business?
• Is there a way to get
more?

26. Goal: Lead nurturing
• New versus returning visitors
• Subscribes
• Bounce rate
• DNS resolution

27. New versus returning visitors
• If your goal is lead
nurturing you want
more returning
• If your goal is lead
generation you want
more new
• Insert pic

28. Subscribes and email list growth
• Do you have people subscribing through your
website?
• Are you growing your email list and frequently
engaging with them?

29. Bounce rate
• Where people enter
and leave your site
• Strive to get pages
below 50%
• What pages have the
highest and what have
the lowest? Why?
• Insert pic

30. DNS Resolution

31. In-page analytics

32. In-page analytics

33. In-page analytics
• Look at where people click
• Which part of your navigation is performing?
• Does your eye tracking strategy work?

34. How do I analyze my website?

35. Case study: marketingcopilot.com
• Launched new homepage November 1, 2014
• Homepage analysis done December 31, 2014 (60
days after launch)
• Launched new homepage in March 2015

36. 60 Day homepage analysis

37. Observations
• The main menu items are performing well
• Blog has the highest click thru, followed by About
and Resources
• We can determine people are interested based on
what they are clicking

38. • Visitors understand that they are supposed to click
on this CTA and are moving to the next step

40. Observations
• Visitors are not clicking to download the
presentation
– They don’t understand the value of the presentation or
they want to learn more before downloading
• Visitors might think that they will need to give their
contact details and aren’t ready yet
– Afraid to click thru

41. Recommendations
• Remove this section of the homepage and place link
to presentation in a different area of the website
• Replace with another download or focus on one
choice only

43. Observation
• Visitors are not clicking on this link
– Maybe they don’t know why they should or don’t see the
value in clicking on this link

44. Recommendation
• Make the CTA more action oriented
– What are we providing them?
– Why should they click thru?

46. Observation
• Results should be higher if this is our main CTA
• People are jumping off before they see it

47. Recommendation
• Move this download further up the homepage to
support lead generation and lead nurturing

48. The aha moment…
• Moving from digital to content marketing
• Best customer searching for content marketing
• Being clear about what we do
• Being clear on the path to content marketing

49. What we did…
• Aligned our keywords to what people wanted not
just what we do
• Re-designed homepage based on Google Analytics
homepage analysis
• Re-wrote content based on keyword strategy
• Re-optimized content based on keyword strategy
• Did not change what was working, only changed
what we could prove wasn’t working

50. Steps to revamp your keyword and
content strategy
1. Use keyword tools to examine words
2. Create a list of keywords you have opportunity to
rank for that make sense for your website
3. Map your keyword strategy to your content map
4. Re-optimize your pages for those keywords
5. Adjust the name of your blog and blog categories
6. Align your social media bios to reflect keywords
7. Create editorial calendar to reflect new keywords

51. The new
homepage
• Shortened steps
• Made CTA more
concise and action
oriented with clear
value proposition

55. Before
After

57. A few results…
• Better search results
• Higher quality leads
• Easier for current customers to share blog
• Easier to understand conversion points

59. Closing thoughts
1. Don’t make decisions based on opinion – use your
data
2. Make an assumption or identify one thing you want
to change and test that first
3. Don’t be afraid to test
4. Use your analytics often – you don’t need to be an
expert but looking at it once a year doesn’t help you
5. 30-60-90 day evaluation cycles work best

60. Get this presentation…
SlideShare
slideshare.net/marketingcopilot
Email us
marie@marketingcopilot.com
Follow us
@mcopilot