Google Analytics Update 2013
Enhancing Your Website’s Performance
In October 2013, three members of The Last Hurdle™ team – Bisola Orimalade, Jules White, and Trevor Ray – successfully completed the Google Analytics Academy Course: Digital Analytics Fundamentals. This course, which was available online until 30th October 2013, provided an excellent opportunity for businesses and individuals to enhance their understanding of Google Analytics. The course covered a wide range of features and tools, offering valuable insights into how to optimise websites and track user behaviour more effectively.
Google Analytics is a vital tool for businesses of all sizes, providing detailed insights into customer behaviour to ensure continual website improvement and, ultimately, increased sales. With Google’s recent updates to its Analytics system, including Event Tracking and eCommerce Tracking, businesses now have even more powerful tools to analyse customer behaviour, improve user experience and boost conversions.
In this article, we’ll explore the key benefits of the Google Analytics update and how these new features can help businesses of all sizes optimise their websites for better performance.
Event Tracking: Gain Deeper Insights into User Behaviour
One of the most exciting updates in the 2013 Google Analytics overhaul is the introduction of Event Tracking. This feature allows businesses to go beyond basic page views and measure specific user interactions on their website. Whether it’s tracking video plays, file downloads or form submissions, Event Tracking provides detailed insights into how users engage with your site, giving you a clearer understanding of your audience’s behaviour.
Key Benefits of Event Tracking:
- Track Specific User Actions:
Instead of just knowing which pages users visit, you can now track specific actions, such as completing a contact form, signing up for a newsletter or clicking through to another blog post. This helps you gain a more comprehensive understanding of how users interact with different elements of your site. - Categorise Events:
With Event Tracking, you can categorise actions into meaningful groups, such as ad clicks, video plays or downloads. This ensures that your reports are organised and meaningful, allowing you to drill down into specific areas of interest and identify trends. - Customisable Action Labels:
You can create customised action labels to track user engagement. For example, you might group file downloads, video plays and button clicks into separate categories to see which areas are generating the most activity. However, it’s important to name actions carefully to avoid grouping unrelated actions together, which can lead to less useful reports.
By using Event Tracking effectively, you can quickly identify which areas of your site are performing well and which need improvement. This data-driven approach helps businesses optimise the user experience, ensuring that key areas of the site are functioning as intended and delivering results.
eCommerce Tracking: Monitoring Sales Performance in Real-Time
Another major addition to Google Analytics in 2013 is the eCommerce Tracking feature, which offers real-time monitoring of purchase information. This powerful tool provides businesses with the ability to track detailed information about transactions, products and customer behaviour during the purchasing process.
Key Benefits of eCommerce Tracking:
- Track Transaction Details:
With eCommerce Tracking, you can collect important data such as transaction IDs, product IDs and sales values. This helps you measure key metrics like your sales conversion rate, average order value, unique purchases and the total number of items sold. - Identify Drop-Off Points:
One of the most valuable aspects of eCommerce Tracking is its ability to highlight where customers drop out of the buying process. If a user abandons their cart at a specific stage, you can identify this point and investigate why it’s happening. Perhaps the checkout process is too complicated, or there’s a lack of payment options. By knowing where the problem lies, you can take steps to fix it, ensuring a smoother purchase journey for customers. - Optimise Product Pages:
The data gathered from eCommerce Tracking can help you identify which product pages are driving the most sales and which ones need improvement. If certain products are outperforming others, you can replicate successful strategies across your product range or tweak underperforming pages to boost sales.
eCommerce Tracking enables businesses to take full control of their online sales performance. By keeping a close eye on real-time data, you can continuously optimise your site and make informed decisions to increase sales conversions and improve the customer journey.
Using Event Tracking and eCommerce Tracking Together
It’s important to note that Google Analytics recommends not implementing both Event Tracking and eCommerce Tracking on the same interaction. This is because using both can create redundant data and over-complicate your reports. Instead, decide which tracking method is more appropriate for your specific business goals and focus on that.
For example, if your primary focus is measuring purchase behaviour, eCommerce Tracking will be the most valuable tool. If you’re more concerned with user interactions such as downloads or form submissions, Event Tracking will be your go-to feature.
Why Google Analytics Matters for Small Businesses
For small businesses, Google Analytics provides an affordable yet powerful way to analyse website performance and improve search engine rankings. The 2013 update adds even more value by offering granular insights into user behaviour and sales performance, which are key for optimising the customer experience and increasing conversions.
Whether you’re looking to improve SEO, understand how users find your site or track purchasing behaviour, Google Analytics gives you the tools to make data-driven decisions. This allows small business owners to maximise their digital presence and get the most from their online marketing efforts.
Need Help with Google Analytics?
Does your business use Google Analytics? Are you fully utilising the data it provides to optimise your site and improve conversion rates? If not, now is the perfect time to start taking advantage of this invaluable tool.
At The Last Hurdle™, our team has successfully completed the Google Analytics Academy Course and is well-versed in using these powerful features to improve business performance. We’re happy to help you understand your website’s analytics and offer guidance on how to make the most of the latest features in Google Analytics.
If you would like to discuss how Google Analytics can benefit your business, or if you need assistance in setting up Event Tracking or eCommerce Tracking, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
