User Guide: How to View and Understand Your Google Analytics as a Beginner

Have you ever wondered why people keep harping on about analytics? They don’t display emotions like Facebook can and they certainly demonstrate shares like Twitter either.  It’s only agencies and big companies that need these right?

Well actually, no.  Even the little guy (SME or Sole Trader) can benefit from these insights.  They do make them pretty hard to understand though in fairness.

The most “popular” analytics we at Fusebox suggest you learn about would be Google Analytics – which frankly mystifies a lot of people!  It’s mighty hard to open and enter in the first place and it uses phrasing that most people would be very unfamiliar with as well, so that’s why we got together and decided to make this simple guide for you.

So let’s start from the beginning and see where we can help you.

You don’t need to be a master with this free tool to take advantage of it’s insights.  If you’re unsure how to open it then open a Google search page and type in “Google Analytics Login”.

Google Analytics

First and foremost, these are only accessible to people who have a website and have asked that their Webmaster add Google Analytics.  We’ve found it’s not always the norm to have it included on the commission of a website.

Most people don’t realise they have access to their Google analytics already.  If you have a Gmail account you have it as part of your login.  It’s called the “One Account” for a reason, that it gives you access to so much.  Including YouTube, Google Docs, Google My Business and lots more. Once you login there are several areas we would like to draw your attention to.  So you simply enter your email and password as normal to open your analytics.

Audience

Audience Overview

This gives you an insight of hours, days, weeks and months of when your audience was on your website.

It explains how many visited and where new or returning visitors and how long they spent on a session on your website.

There is also an important section called Bounce Rate.  This marks how people have visited your website but then realised it’s the wrong one and “bounced” almost immediately away.  The lower the figure this is, the better.

Acquisition

Overview

This initially outlines how you have gained people to your website through organic search or perhaps direct linking through social media channels perhaps.

You can then drill down deeper in the next sub section “All Traffic – Channels” and see exactly how many people visited your website from a link you shared on a Facebook post.

Source / Medium

This section gives you quite a thorough indication of where people have come across your website and numerical results, again you can measure these daily, weekly etc.

1. google / organic

2. m.facebook.com / referral

3. (direct) / (none)

4. t.co / referral

5. missinglettr-twitter / social_link

6. bing / organic

7. facebook.com / referral

8. missinglettr-facebook / social_link

9. pinterest.com / referral

Referrals

This section is seen more as an overview of the above section!

Now click out of Acquisition and click into:

Behaviour

Overview

This is where you can see your audience has visited over the last time period and see which posts, pages are the most visited.

Behaviour Flow

This would be an important section to visit.  This is your customers journey through your website.  It shows you where they arrive and where they go through your website and “drop off” or leave.

You can quickly ascertain from here what pages are working for you and what aren’t.

Site Content

Within this tab is a Landing Page and an Exit Page sub tab.  These are where your audience has arrived and left.

By understanding your customers journey arriving through to leaving you can see what triggered them to move through the pages.  Was it there was a obvious section like you responded to a question and then suggested they hit the Contact page?  Or perhaps you have a special offer mentioned on the Home Page and you then had them click through to the offer? 

We hope this helps you through the initial start up of your journey through Google Analytics, as ever, do contact us if we can help!

The 6 Smart Things to Know about Going Live and Pre-Recording Your Visual Content

Marketing has moved on so much from the old model.  We have had to accept a more visual aspect to our everyday marketing, like it or not.  In some ways, it can make it easier to establish relationships with our client, especially if we have an attractive product.

For a very long time clever photography and lighting have been enough, but not any more!  Now there is a huge expectation on business to have a video, a Live of some form, heck – you should have a YouTube channel surely!

We know it’s creating a lot of pressure on businesses large and small to facilitate these expectations.  These cost time and money to do properly.  Alongside prioritising where the money should go and do you have staff members in the video or pay for actors?  It can be a minefield.

Here at Fusebox, we work with a whole bunch of collaborators who change and move in and out.  It’s not feasible for us to have our team really “feature” in our content as it moves with the needs of our clients.

So a few of us here sat down recently to give you some helpful tips that should help you and us in creating pre recorded videos and Going Live!  If you do go on to create something from this, we’d appreciate being tagged on social media.

To consider for both:

·       Pick a Frequently Asked Question and devise a memorable way to answer it.

·       Pick a naturally well lit area to film.

·       Make sure you’re WiFi strength is strong enough to carry it.

·       Always use a microphone, hand held or lapel.

·       Ensure it’s not too windy, if it is, get a “furry” mic which is adept at cancelling out the wind noise.

·       Face towards the light, we all look better for it!

·       Be mindful where you’re going to share the content, most of the time you’re phone needs to be horizontal – unless you’re just sticking to Instagram Live then it’s Portrait.

·       Always have a Call to Action.

·       Practice and try and laugh at yourself.  You relax faste

6 Top Tips for Going Live

1.      Welcome the first few people to your Live and smile and wave shortly afterwards if you spot others join, but (try) remain focused on getting through the Live and stay on long enough to give people time to join but not long enough that you see the last few people leave.

2.      What ever your subject matter is, can you add props to it?  Looking at a person is great but can you add meaningful props like a product, or even a hashtag.  It also gives you something to do with your hands!

3.      Sometimes being on your own doing this is unthinkable, so don’t be.  Rope in a colleague or friend who can either be the “customer” or the person asking you questions

4.      Try where possible to add movement to your Live, move around a location that you’re based it perhaps.  Show the “behind-the-scenes”, the “think-tank” if you want – all Live watchers are voyeurs!

5.      Being overly bubbly comes across better when going live for some weird reason.  If you’re naturally constrained – push yourself.  If you’re not, be yourself!

6.      Have a Gimble for your phone, they’re not that expensive and it means you can move around, walk or even run and you don’t shudder the phone.

Pre-Recording a Video

1.      These can be as formal or not as you like.  All of the above applies but obviously you can do retakes until you’re happy.

2.      In a pre-recording you have time to add brand image, colours and message, throughout the video, remember to overlay text where necessary to cement what’s important.

3.      Always assume your audience is going to be listening to your video silently, so always add captions.

4.      If you’re recording from an offsite location (from your business premises), make a point of mentioning and thanking the location.  It’s more likely to shared by that location then.

5.      Try and encourage your audience to come back for future videos by mentioning what’s coming up next.

6.      Make as many as you can as “evergreen” as possible, this means they can remain relevant for a long time and when your audience lands on it, it won’t feel outdated or no longer relevant.

We hope you find this useful and look forward to seeing your visual content streaming soon on your social media channels, YouTube channel and website!

If you need any help with these, then do let us know!