An Introduction To Google Analytics For Home Care & Care Home Businesses
Posted on | Posted in General, Care Home Marketing, Home Care Marketing, Blog
If you don’t know what Google Analytics is, haven’t installed it on your website, or have installed it but never look at your data, then this post is for you. While it’s hard for many to believe, there are still websites that are not using Google Analytics (or any kind of analytics, for that matter) to measure their traffic.
Google Analytics is a very powerful tool. The benefits include seeing how people are finding your website, tracking what people do once they are on it, tracking conversions, and above all… it’s FREE.
Most people do know all this but just don’t use it because it gives too much data and they don’t know where to start!
Getting started with Google Analytics as a Home Care or Care Home Business can be a little intimidating, but here are 3 things you can be thinking about when starting:
1. Where is your traffic coming from
You must think about where your traffic is coming from: paid search (Google Ads/Bing Ads), organic search (they found you on a search engine but not through an Ad), social media, referrals (could be directories), direct (leaflets campaigns/know your brand). Hypothetically, if on a monthly basis you are receiving 1000 visitors to your site, you need to know what percentage of traffic is coming as a result of which of these marketing activities.
2. The number of new visitors coming to your site
You need to keep track of how many monthly visitors you were getting prior to doing any marketing and then subsequently how many you were getting once you started to invest time and perhaps money into another marketing activity. You should keep tracking this and hopefully you will see a positive correlation between the amount of marketing you are doing vs the number of new visitors to your site.
3. The number of conversions that take place
You must track the number of conversions that take place on your site. A conversion is simply when someone takes an action on your website, for example fills in a form, downloads a brochure etc. It’s always good to see which bits of your website are getting you the most conversions and which bits perhaps aren’t working so well. Ideally, you want to make sure that your website is fit for purpose before using Google Analytics so you can get off to a good start.
Ultimately, your goal is to know your top traffic sources. You want to go to your monthly meetings and have clear numbers showing what your level of traffic has been for that month, where most of the conversions came from and discuss how you can do more of what the numbers show is working.
It takes a while to get your head around any new tool, so do not panic if you still feel a little confused about Google Analytics! It’s all a learning curve. You may want to do some more reading to familiarise yourself with the service and we also have plenty of blog posts and other resources on care marketing tips and tricks that you may be interested in alongside using Google Analytics.
If you would like more information on how to utilise Digital Marketing within your care business, check out our blogs, e-books, or call or email our team today!