We know you’re busy and have a to-do list that’s a mile long, but if you’re serious about growing your business, you need to start with the basics. Who are your customers, and where do they come from? We present to you: Google Analytics. Millions of businesses both big and small rely on this tool for web analytics. It’s a free and relatively simple tool to use.
We reckon google analytics is the perfect partner for your online ordering system. But in case you’re not familiar, we thought we’d give you a quick overview of some of the basics and how you can use them in your hospitality business.
First things first
What is Google Analytics?
It’s a tool that allows you to track visitors to your online shop, telling you where people have come from (through social media or email for example). You can then utilise this information to give you a better insight on how to convert these visits into sales.
Why track your traffic?
You don’t need to track visits. You could just let them happen and hope for the best … just like you could continue to use marketplace apps and never own YOUR data. But as we’ve said before, if you’re looking for long term growth, you might want to reconsider. Here are a couple reasons
- Understand your customers better – analysing data can help you pinpoint your target market and find out what they want. This can really help with your comms and messaging. You can also identify your most loyal customers, and reward them!
- Measure campaigns – sometimes you might have a natural hunch that something is going to be successful, but wouldn’t it be nice to back this up with data. Find out what channels work best and generate the most visits. That way you have a better idea of where you should be investing your time.
- Identify and fill gaps – in both your traffic and content. Make better decisions based on actual data, whether that’s the products you push or the channels you drive through.
Help customers find you
You want your customers to be able to find your store easily and from multiple channels. Whether they come through ads, social or just searching for your URL, you need to understand the role that each of these channels plays in your overall sales mix.
To find traffic sources for specific pages you just need to do the following:
- Log into your Universal Google Analytics account and navigate to Behaviour » Site Content. From there you can choose whether to view the traffic sources of all of your website’s pages, the landing pages, or the exit pages.
- Next, use Secondary Dimension and search for Source/Medium, which is under Acquisition.
- Now you’ll see a list of your website’s landing pages, complete with the source of your site’s traffic, which is where visitors were before clicking on your website, and the medium, which is how your visitors arrived at your website.
Make the data work for you
Once you’ve grasped the basics and have learnt to navigate around your analytics, it’s time to start analysing. Looking at the data is really important and interesting but it’s what you do with it that matters.
Pay attention to what days and times are most popular with your customers and tailor your offering to what they need. Do you need to have more staff available to support your online shop on those days? Or might you need to stock up on a certain product! With analytics, you can start to anticipate customer needs.
Where are they ordering from? You might have grounds to expand your delivery radius or even think about adding ‘nationwide’ delivery to your lineup so that more people have access to your venue.
It can also give you insight into what you’re not doing well and indicate where you can improve. For example, are customers bouncing (leaving the site) before actually buying anything? Do you need to update your imagery, change product descriptions or offer a more affordable delivery rate? Analytics can help you answer all these questions and more.
Level up
Google Analytics can be intimidating at first, but it’s a really great tool when you get your head around it. Once you’ve mastered the basics and optimised your organic channels, let us help you level up. At Slerp we have an expert team of digital and performance marketers who can support you. They can increase your revenue, running ads on your social media and google search, and help you boost your search ranking through SEO, all of which attract new leads and convert them into orders.
Remember we’re always here for any questions you have or support you need, just drop us a line and we can guide you through the tools that are right for you and your hospitality business.