1. How to Use Google
Analytics to Make Your
Website Better
Dylan Brooks | Phillip Long
SEO Coordinator | Customer Advocate

2. What is Google
Analytics?

3. Google Analytics is
• A free analytical measurement program
from Google that simultaneously tracks and
helps analyze activity on your website.
• An invaluable tool for your agency’s website
that can help refine your Internet marketing
tactics.

4. How Does It Work?
• Google Analytics installs a hidden JavaScript
code on your website.

5. How Does It Work?
• Whenever a page is viewed, the JavaScript
code works with web browser cookies to
collect data on the user’s location, browser
and referral channel.

6. Why Use Google
Analytics?

7. Do You Know…
• How people are finding your website?
• Which pages people are visiting once they land
on your website and in what order?
• If people are requesting quotes, filing claims or
making payments through your website?
• If your website traffic is increasing or
decreasing month-to-month and for which
channels?
• Google Analytics can tell you the answers to
these questions.

8. Using Google Analytics for Your
Internet Marketing Strategy
• Analyze the effectiveness of different
marketing channels, devices, website pages
and the flow of your website towards
achieving your business objectives.
• Determine how well your website is at
capturing your target visitor.
• Make changes to your website or associated
marketing channels to help reach your
goals.

9. Making Changes to
Marketing Tactics
• Google Analytics data can help you
• Diversify visitor acquisition for your website
across a wider variety of channels.
• Improve poor performing website pages and
optimize the flow of your website so more
visitors can take action to become prospects
and clients.
• Determine which opportunities are best for
cross-channel marketing.

10. Getting Started With Google
Analytics
1. Determine your business objectives for
your website.
2. Set up Google Analytics tracking.
3. Monitor data as it relates to your business
objectives.
4. Make adjustments to your marketing
strategy as needed.

11. What To Look For

12. What To Look For
• As you get started with Google Analytics,
it’s important to know what you’re looking
for when you analyze data.
• Google Analytics can break down data by
several factors that can give you a better
view of where your website visitors are
coming from and what they’re doing.

13. What To Look For

14. What To Look For
• Sessions: Each time a visitor lands on your
website, it counts as a session.
• The session count will tell you how many times
your website is visited, but it won’t show much
about visitor interaction.
• If you have a low session count, focus on
marketing initiatives that drive people to your
website.
• SEO improvements
• A targeted email campaign

15. What To Look For
• % New Sessions: The percentage of visitors
who landed on your website for the first
time.
• If the business objective of your website is to
drive new business, you’ll want this percentage
to be high.
• If you’re equally focused on gaining new
business and serving current clients online, this
number can be closer to 50%.

16. What To Look For
• Pageviews: How many pages were viewed
by visitors to your website, in aggregate.
• You want this number to be higher than
your session count.
• This indicates that visitors are interacting with
your website by clicking on more than one
page.

17. What To Look For
• Average Session Duration: How long visitors
spend on your website, on average.
• Your target average session duration value can
vary depending on your business objectives and
website structure.
• In general, visitors will spend at least a minute
on your website if they complete a form or
gather information to call your agency.

18. What To Look For
• Pages/Session: How many pages visitors
view, on average, per session.
• The target number for this value can vary,
depending on your business objectives and
website structure.
• It’s generally best if visitors view more than one
page per session, as that shows that they’re
engaging with your website.

19. What To Look For
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of website
visitors who left the site after viewing only
one page.
• A good bounce rate is 60% or lower.
• A high bounce rate could indicate that your
website is missing out on potential leads and
clients.
• Take a closer look at pages on your website
with high bounce rates to see if they can be
redone.

20. What To Look For
• Channel: Which marketing channel visitors
used to find your website.

21. What To Look For
• Channel: Which marketing avenue visitors
use to find your website.
• Organic: A visitor clicked on your website link in
the search results in Google, Yahoo or Bing.
• PPC/Paid Search: A visitor clicked on your paid
search ad in Google, Yahoo or Bing.
• Direct: A visitor typed in your URL directly or
followed a bookmark or browser history link.
• Referral: A visitor clicked on a link to your
website on another website.
• Social: A visitor clicked on your website link on a
social media site, such as Facebook or Twitter.

22. What To Look For
• Source/Medium: A combination of referring
websites and the marketing channel
assigned to them.

23. What To Look For
• Source/Medium: A combination of referring
websites and the marketing channel
assigned to them.
• Questions to ask:
• Are there any sources that I should be focusing
on more?
• Are certain sources performing better or worse
than expectations?

24. What To Look For
• Geo-Location: Geographic locations where
visitors are accessing your website.

25. What To Look For
• Geo-Location: Geographic locations where
visitors are accessing your website.
• Google Analytics looks at the locations of the IP
addresses of website visitors to determine this .
• Questions to ask:
• Are my target geographic markets being
represented adequately?
• Are people visiting my website from areas my
agency doesn’t serve?

26. What To Look For
• Web Browser: The program visitors use to
access your website.

27. What To Look For
• Web Browser: The program visitors use to
access your website.
• Questions to ask:
• Does my website appear and function correctly
in all browsers?
• If not, what needs to be done to fix the user
experience on each browser?
• You might need to work with a developer to fix
certain browser-specific issues.

28. What To Look For
• Device: The tool visitors use to access the
Internet and land on your website.

29. What To Look For
• Device: The tool visitors use to access the
Internet and land on your website.
• Questions to ask:
• Is my website mobile friendly?
• Should I be focusing more on mobile devices?
• If you have a website built using ITC’s Insurance
Website Builder, you have a mobile version of your
website.
• If not, you might need to work with a developer to
enhance your website’s mobile performance and
enhancements.

30. What To Look For
• Behavior Flow: Shows the path visitors take
on your website, from the first page to the
last page they view before exiting.

31. What To Look For
• Behavior Flow: Shows the path visitors take
on your website, from the first page to the
last page they view before exiting.
• Questions to ask:
• When visitors land on my website, what are
some common sequences of pages they follow?
• Do these page sequences meet my business
objectives for my website?
• Are there page sequences with high drop-off
rates that might need to be fixed?

32. Customization

33. Customization
• Filters: Help include, exclude or categorize data to
make it easier to analyze.
• Many Google Analytics users add a filter to
remove all website visits that originate through
their office IP address from reports.

34. Customization
• Goals: Defined website actions that are
valuable to your business objectives.

35. Customization
• Goals: Defined website actions that are
valuable to your business objectives.
• Creating goals can help you view conversion
data, which is calculated by dividing the number
of website visitors who complete each goal by
the total number of sessions.
• Conversion data can help you determine if your
agency’s website is meeting your business
objectives. This information can impact your
Internet marketing strategy.

36. Customization
• Destination goals are particularly good for
forms and client acquisition objectives.
• These goals track the amount of times a specific
page is viewed.
• Destination goals work best when they track a
page that is only accessible after a visitor takes
a specific action.
• If you have forms on your website, make sure
they redirect to specific confirmation pages on
your website when a visitor completes a form.
• You can then track the amount of visits to the
specific confirmation pages to see how many
visitors are completing forms.

37. Google Analytics Best
Practices

38. Google Analytics Best
Practices
• Don’t micromanage data.
• Data can fluctuate on a daily basis. Don’t
overreact to data changes that occur in a small
amount of time.
• Instead, look at trends on a weekly or monthly
basis.

39. Google Analytics Best
Practices
• Consider external factors:
• Insurance can be a highly seasonal industry, so
traffic will often drop off in certain months.
• If you start or pause a PPC campaign, your
website traffic could also fluctuate.
• Email referral campaigns and social media
campaigns can also lead to fluctuations in
traffic.
• Ask yourself if any of these factors could be
responsible for a change in website traffic
before adapting your marketing strategy.

40. Google Analytics Best
Practices
• Have specific business objectives.
• Start small with your business objectives for
your website. Define your target visitor and
your focus line of business.
• Track your progress in meeting these objectives
and then expand your strategy wider.
• It will be easier to track your progress through
Google Analytics and grow your strategy this
way.

41. Summary
• Focus on business objectives before looking at
Google Analytics data.
• Analyze where your website visitors are coming
from and what they’re doing on your website,
and make sure it aligns with your objectives.
• Customize data to see if visitors are using your
website to convert into prospects and clients.
• Look at data trends on your website before
shifting your Internet marketing strategy.
• Focus on website improvements and cross-
channel marketing initiatives to improve your
website’s performance in specific areas.

42. Resources
• To set up Google Analytics:
• http://www.google.com/analytics/
• You will need to create a login or use a Gmail
address to create an account
• Google Analytics Support
• http://support.google.com/analytics/
• Helpful articles for every aspect of Google
Analytics

43. Questions?

44. Thank You
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