Google Analytics and Continuous Improvement

I had a potential new client call me the other day wanting to lift the financial performance of his existing site.  He doesn’t want a new website due to not having access to capital expenditure, but has room in his operational budget to set aside for monthly improvements to the existing site.  (Exceed Online often works on existing websites and endorses this approach when capital investment is not available). 

When reviewing the website to determine if Exceed could help, he told me the site is organically superior due to all the traffic he receives each month (apparently his site receives 20,000 unique visitors each month).  This conclusion came from him viewing the AW stats package which came with the website.  AW stats, good times, good times. 

My reply:

Dear John (fictitious name),

Do you have Google Analytics installed on your site; can you give me a breakdown of your traffic sources?  (There was silence.  No Google Analytics.)  You realise traffic could come from anywhere and can come in many forms i.e. branded, unbranded, direct.  The only way we would truly understand the traffic sources is if I had access to a more comprehensive analytics package. 

Your view of your website’s performance, at this stage is extremely limited and there are not enough insights for us to make recommendations on changes required to improve the financial performance of your website.

John, remember the old marketing saying, “50% of our Marketing worked, we just aren’t sure which 50% it was”.  Well, those days are now over.  With Google Analytics we can see everything.

Are you advertising on Google (Adwords).  (Yes he is)  Is that making money for you?  (John didn’t answer).  OK, the first thing we need to do before anything else is install Google Analytics on your site.  Then you can come back in one month and we can tell you exactly what is and what is not working. 

Exceed Online is 1 of only 40 companies in the world that holds “Google Analytics Accreditation“.  Our team can look at any website with GA installed and provide clients valuable insights into what is wrong with their website, and make recommendations to fix the problems.  This is a critical part of a continuous improvement process which builds the financial performance of any website Exceed Online gets its hands on.

If you are to remember one thing from this article remember this.  You can spend $10k on a Magazine advertisement, but when the issue is no longer current (typically one month later) that investment is gone forever.  When the Exceed team corrects a performance issue on your website, it continues to add value to your business forever.