She stared at me like deer in the headlights when I asked her to tell me the specifics about her audience. Not the ideal customer we had created together, but who was actually showing up and making purchases? What gender are they? How old are they? What are their interests? And how many people were coming to her store, online or in-person? You could have heard a penny drop as she sat and just stared at me.
“How am I supposed to figure that out?”
It’s a valid question. After all, you can’t know everyone who is coming to your website or meet every person that walks into your shop. So how do you get to know your audience so you can better serve them? Analytics.
The Analytics You Should Be Looking At
If you have a website you need to be connected to some sort of analytics. Shopify has their own built in but I almost always recommend that everyone connect with Google Analytics. The reason for this is that Google Analytics has a more robust analysis and will also help you in tracking your ads to ensure that you’re spending your money in the right places.
However, it’s not just website analytics you should be tracking but also that of your audiences on social media. With a business account on Instagram you can get the breakdown of what your audience looks like under insights. Or you can use a third party system to get even more in-depth analytics. For Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and pretty much every other social platform out there, you can get a basic understanding of your audience from the analytics that are built into these programs.
So what should you be looking for in your analytics? Start with these:
- Age and gender of your audience
- Where are they located?
- What times of day are they on the platform?
- What do they like (most popular website pages, posts with the most engagement, etc.)?
- Interests (usually shown in Google Analytics)
All of these questions will help you understand who your current customers are and what is and isn’t working on each platform. You’ll start to notice trends on types of content that connect with your audience. Analytics will also help give you ideas of where you could be advertising or what new products you need to support your audience.
Dive Deeper with Data Studio
One of the other reasons I highly suggest using Google Analytics is it’s ability to integrate with other Google tools. Tools like Google Tag Manager and my new favorite Google Data Studio.
Data Studio can pull all your analytics from your website along with from multiple ad platforms and create one seamless dashboard for you to look at your audience. You customize this dashboard to show you the tools you most want to see like
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Button clicks
- Conversions
- Interests
- Top Website Pages
- Ad CTR, CPC and more
Data Studio is a free tool that will help you get a clear picture of the people coming to your website. It allows you to get the questions to your answers of what’s working, what pages need work, and who you are reaching. If the audience that shows up in your Data Studio isn’t the same as your ideal customer, it might be time to make some changes.
How I Use Analytics
While it can be easy to go down the rabbit hole of analytics, it’s important to not get lost in these numbers. There is a ton of information to learn and yet, information isn’t going to change your business. Action is. Set up Google Analytics and Data Studio, check in with your social insights and remember that these are numbers you should come back to about once a quarter. Then you can see who is showing up and if they align with the customer you’re trying to connect to.
I like to see the age, gender and location first to easily paint a picture. Understanding their interests can also help me better create audiences for ad campaigns so that I know my ads are reaching the exact audience I want to sell to.
From there, I look at what pages get the most views and how long a viewer is on that page. If the bounce rate is high, that means it’s time to do some work on that page. It isn’t providing the information that people need in order to convert or stay awhile. If a page gets a ton of views and has a low bounce rate but you aren’t getting conversion there could be some A/B testing to try with your call to action or playing with your price point.
Analytics are here to help you see what is and isn’t working so that you can A/B test to ensure that more things are working for your business. If you’re just throwing content out there and not seeing how you’re audience responds, you aren’t fully serving your audience and even worst, you aren’t serving your business.
Time To Use Your Analytics
Analytics give you insight into your customer and your business. It’s the tool that will help you make the changes you need to see growth and to connect with your audience.
Still not sure how to use analytics to gain insights into your business? I got you boo! Sign up for my FREE 30-minute strategy call and let’s talk about the analytics of your business. See how we can start making some changes that will serve you and your customers. Sign up for your free call today!
