Google Analytics

A short introduction to an essential dental website data tool.

Google offers a wide range of free tools to help website owners understand how their site is performing and how it might be optimised.

One of the key tools which all websites should use is called Google Analytics and is provided free of charge by Google.

What does Google Analytics do?

Analytics is essentially a suite of reports that sits on top of a huge amount of data which is accrued in a database when users visit a website. The data is accessed via a web based administration area which you log into from any internet connected PC. Analytics is an essential tool for any dental digital marketer as in provides a great deal of in-depth information. However, it also provides “at a glance” information which will be useful for any dental business owner too.

How do I get started with Google Analytics?

First off, you have to sign up for an account – this is easy enough to do and also easy to integrate into your main Google account alongside your GMail, Webmaster Tools, G+ etc. During the sign-up process, a short piece of unique scripting code will be made available to you which needs to be installed on your website. You may need your web designer to assist with this. Here at Dental Media we do this as standard for all of our digital marketing clients.

This piece of code actually tracks the visitors whilst they are on your website and feeds this data back to the database.

What sort of information does Analytics provide?

Any business, dentists included, need to understand how their assets are performing and this also holds true for the dental practice website.

There are a number of pre-configured reports available but experienced users can also develop bespoke reports and “dashboards” for analysing very specific sets of data. Here are some of the basic reports which a dental business manager may find useful:

Traffic – these reports shows overall traffic to the website as well as segmented data. So for example, you can see which traffic came from “free” search as well as from paid channels – e.g. AdWords. You can also see data for mobile and tablet traffic amongst other several other channels.

Bounce rate – this is a measure of those visitors who landed on your dental website but “bounced” away immediately without surfing through any extra pages. This is a quality indicator and a high bounce rate can be indicative of your web pages being unappealing for visitors. However, it is also possible to get high bounce figures generated by spurious “bot” traffic so you may need to dig into the data a little to get a true picture.

Time on site – this is exactly as it sounds, i.e. a measure of how long a user stays on your website before moving on elsewhere. High “time on site” usually indicates that your web pages are engaging and offering the best chance of a new user getting in touch with you.

Key landing pages – here you can see a list of the main entry pages for your website which can be useful to give an idea of how popular the various sections of your site are. Similar data exists for “exit pages”.

AdWords – if you are a pay-per-click subscriber, you can integrate your AdWords and Analytics accounts for convenience. However, to get deeper insights, it also pays to view your data in your separate AdWords reporting suite too.

Conversions – these are very important and show how many times your contact form was completed within a given period of time. You can also set many other types of conversion. This data enables you to see which of your channels e.g. free search traffic versus pay-per-click, is performing best. For dentists who subscribe to services such as “Response Tap” telephone analytics, it is also possible to see how many enquiries came to the practice via ‘phone call after the user viewed your website or off-line advertisement.

Trends – for all of the data, you can create graphical trends. This is particularly useful to measure various aspects of performance over time and, for example, to give you a clear idea of how your digital marketing campaign is performing.

A note on keywords – it used to be that you could see which keyword searches generated visits to your website. However, Google now restricts much of this data. You can still get an idea of what may have been used as search terms by looking at landing page information and knowing how these are optimised – but you will not see specific information now unfortunately.

These are just a small selection of reports which can be accessed and the main ones which will tell you how your website is performing. However, there are many more which you can use as your experience and confidence with the tool increases.

Summary

Google Analytics is a free reporting suite which provides all sorts of traffic information for a website and which no business should be without.

Make sure your web designer has installed it for you and that you have access to it in your own Google account – not in the account of your designer or marketer. It’s your data and you don’t want to lose it if you part company.

If you would like more information about Google Analytics including free advice on the best ways to use it, please give Dental Media a call on 01332 672548 and we will be pleased to assist.