It’s a personal version of the old adage of what gets measured gets managed. Printers are no strangers to this sort of thing with MIS software providing KPIs, OEEs and other TLAs used to analyse productivity.
While production has been the focus of this efficiency drive, sales and marketing may have been overlooked. With the pervasiveness of the web in the promotion and transaction of printers’ businesses, it’s as important to know how hard your website is working as your press. Which is where a service such as Google Analytics comes in.
What is Google Analytics?
Web analytics systems, of which Google Analytics is the best known example, are software tools that record and analyse data about the usage of a website. Those details include where visitors came from, how long they stayed and where they went next. Other details include the type of device used to view the page(s), which can be useful for ensuring the user experience (UX) is appropriate. For example making sure a site works well on desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone.
How does it work?
It uses a small piece of code that is embedded in a web page to record and report the details of visitors to that page. Once the code is embedded in your site central software tracks the visitors and the results can be analysed by logging into the Google Analytics website.
How can it benefit your business?
What you use your website for will determine how Google Analytics can benefit you. Most printers use their websites for marketing, so the biggest benefit will be seeing how effective a website is as a marketing tool.
“It’s a way to quantify the effectiveness of the website,” says Lawrence Dalton, managing director of 1st Byte, which was the winner of the PrintWeek Marketing Campaign of the Year award in 2014. “I get a weekly report, which I can’t say I look at too intently beyond the main numbers, it is a means to an end.”
1st Byte outsources its website development, including the implementation of Google Analytics, to a third party; in its case its long-standing web designer Bournemouth-based This is Cloud. Using Google Analytics has been part and parcel of the evolution of the site. However, for Dalton, the website is only one part his broader sales and marketing strategy.
“The main use of the website is to get prospects to request a quote or a sample pack,” he says. “The right approach from then on is to send out the sales team to meet them.”
Dalton’s experience provides an example of why Google Analytics can be useful; internet search expert Philip Price, who is now ProCo’s technical development director is well versed on how it can be used.
“The first thing to use Google Analytics for is insight and information about the use of your site,” says Price. “Basic information such as how many people are visiting, how many times, how long they stayed and how many pages they viewed.”
One of the most important metrics used in web analytics is the bounce rate – this is a measure of how many users land on one page and then leave without looking at any others. Generally a high bounce rate is bad – you want to encourage visitors to hang around. But Price highlights that you need to consider the context.
“I’d want a low bounce rate for a blog with lots of content,” he says. “But if it was the contacts page or details of opening hours I’d expect a high bounce rate.”
This is one example of how Google Analytics can be used to monitor visitor behaviour on a website. It can show what is of interest, which provides insights on the audience.
“For example you might find a set of words that are attracting interest that you didn’t realise were important,” he says.
It’s possible to integrate Google Analytics with Adwords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising. It can also be used within a broader search marketing strategy, including organic search – that is those results where your site appears in a search that you haven’t paid for. Google Analytics can also be used to track interactions via social media such as response to your Twitter activity; and email marketing, with mail packages such as Mailchimp supporting integration and tracking in Google Analytics.
How much does it cost?
Analytics is a free service offered by Google. So the only cost is the time taken to use it, which shouldn’t be overlooked. If you use an external company to manage your website, there will be their costs for implementing it and managing it to consider too.
For Price it’s a no-brainer: “Analytics software doesn’t get better, and it’s free.”
There are paid-for web analytics tools too, although the expert view is they are only necessary for larger organisations. They offer a different way of presenting user data. Rather than presenting aggregated – that is anonymised data – they do extra snooping to identify users more accurately. This can be down to the company and individual by looking at IP addresses and social profiles. The argument for doing this is that it can turn analytics into a lead generation tool. However, this could be problematic according to Price.
“It’s a questionable practice,” he argues. “When I’m online I don’t want to be known until I choose to be. I’d keep away from such sneakiness.”
He argues that there are better ways to get visitors to willingly part with their details by registering, say in exchange for a newsletter or white paper.
How do you get started?
Price’s advice is to define some metrics and have a go.
“Getting the best out of Google is something of an art form and you can only really learn by doing it,” he says. “If you’re a small company, I’d try to understand it yourself.”
For most firms he advises looking at a few key indicators to start with: number of visitors, bounce rate and session length.
Using Analytics is straightforward. Anyone with a Google account (for instance if they use Gmail) can sign up for it. Once you have your account it provides the unique code needed to add to each page and allows you to define the site to be covered. If you use an external web developer, you provide them with the code and they embed it in the right places.
If you manage your company website internally then you need to put the code in the right place on each page yourself. Most of the standard packages such as Wordpress and Drupal support Analytics, making it simple to slot the code in. For custom sites the developer should be able to help.
For anyone who wants to get more involved the Analytics site itself has a lot of user guides and help and there are active forums where it is possible to ask other users for advice.
Google Analytics is a useful tool for online marketing. If you don’t already use Analytics then it’s worth seeing if it is suitable for you and how best to do so. Working out how to use it is part of your sales & marketing strategy. The questions to answer before you deploy Analytics are what are you using your website for and what metrics can measure success in achieving those objectives?
“Google Analytics can’t tell you what to do, it has no intelligence, it can only give you information,” says Price.
The contrarian’s view
Not everyone is enamoured with Google Analytics. Asif Choudry, sales & marketing director at Leeds firm Resource is an example of someone who doesn’t see the benefits for his business.
“You can get so wrapped up in Analytics but it’s important to consider what you can actually do with that information,” says Choudry.
His reasoning is that Analytics is a distraction from the firm’s sales and marketing strategy.
Resource’s target market is business-to-business communications to a number of niche vertical markets, including social housing, and tends to find its clients rather than vice versa.
“The odd random online requests we get are for the sort of general print jobs that we wouldn’t want,” he says. “According to our CRM we’ve never won a client via our web site. The people who come to us via the website are other printers checking out our web-to-print system.”
Choudry doesn’t completely dismiss Analytics, which the firm does provide as a service to clients. However, he believes the way it uses its website within its sales & marketing strategy means Analytics isn’t right for Resource.
“The key sales & marketing metrics for us are the interaction our sales force have with the clients,” he says. “Our website is a tool that is useful further down the sales and marketing process,” he says. “Customers check to make sure it matches what we’ve said we can do.”
As for Google’s ability to tell you about the devices visitors are looking at your site on, he feels that with the latest generation of website creation tools that’s a red herring.
“Responsive design, such as a simple Wordpress site, means you don’t need to know whether people are viewing your site on a PC, or on an Android or iOS device. So we can focus on the content.”
