Is Everyone Using Google Analytics to It's Fullest Potential with Goals?

I'm sure most everyone now has Google Analytics installed on their websites (I hope) but are you using it to make smart business decisions?
Setting up goals is very important and will allow you to better evaluate the performance of your website and identify your top performing traffic sources.
We have analytics goals setup for room views, availability checks, checkout, reservation placed, contact form submissions, etc that allow us to see where the vast majority of our online business originated from (and where it didn't).
Here are some cool things you can do after goals are setup:
1) See conversions by device type (mobile / tablet / desktop).

• Interestingly mobile and desktop both had the same conversion rate while tablet was double that!

2) See conversions by channel grouping (Organic / Paid / Referral / Paid / Display / etc).

• Organic search overall performed the best mainly because it was primarily people searching us by our business name.
• Social performed the worst (we receive a huge amount of social traffic from local residents just wanting to see interior photos of our B&B).
• We also run remarketing display banner ads and although we only received 3 clicks from banner ads, 1 of those 3 clicks actually booked a room! I would suggest looking into remarketing ads for social and display because it keeps your B&B top of the person's mind for a very minimal investment. PS: for those who are confused as to what remarketing ads are, they are basically the "creepy" ads that follow people around the internet for a set amount of time after they visit your website.
• Referral traffic is where it gets really valuable because you can see how much business was generated from all of the directories and third party websites....more about this next.

3) See conversions based on the referral website (bedandbreakfast.com, tripadvisor.com, etc). Referral traffic is basically when a person clicks on your website link from a 3rd party website. So this is a good place to help identify your highest and lowest performing listing sites (that don't have a direct reservation system).

• I'm not going to go into the stats on how each popular source performed but for some sites we definitely got our money's worth and others not so much.

If you want to get really advanced you can even use a service like CallRail to identify phone calls - where they came from, from what device type, etc.
Here's a great article on how to setup goals in Google Analytics:
https://www.conversioner.com/blog/setup-goals-google-analytics-3-easy-steps
Of course just having the data doesn't help unless you act on it, so you need to be able to interpret the results to take actionable steps. I know logging into Google analytics is a pain, so one cool often forgotten about feature is the ability to schedule automatic Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly analytics reports straight to your email inbox.
Hope this helps!

One other thing I forgot to mention is the importance of using UTM tracking codes on links to your website so you can track the performance and results of each campaign. For example using them on your email blasts would be beneficial in seeing what users do once they land on your site, without using UTM codes email traffic typically gets grouped into the traffic source abyss of "Direct".
Here's what an example URL with a UTM tracking code looks like:
http://www.examplebedandbreakfast.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=new_year&utm_medium=email
If you want to use a UTM tracking code it just takes a few seconds using this quick free tool:
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Using UTM codes will give Analytics better data so you can make smarter informed digital marketing decisions now and in the future!
Does anyone happen to be using them?

himelhochbb said:

One other thing I forgot to mention is the importance of using UTM tracking codes on links to your website so you can track the performance and results of each campaign. For example using them on your email blasts would be beneficial in seeing what users do once they land on your site, without using UTM codes email traffic typically gets grouped into the traffic source abyss of "Direct".
Here's what an example URL with a UTM tracking code looks like:
http://www.examplebedandbreakfast.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=new_year&utm_medium=email
If you want to use a UTM tracking code it just takes a few seconds using this quick free tool:
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Using UTM codes will give Analytics better data so you can make smarter informed digital marketing decisions now and in the future!
Does anyone happen to be using them?.

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this. This is some great stuff.

himelhochbb said:

One other thing I forgot to mention is the importance of using UTM tracking codes on links to your website so you can track the performance and results of each campaign. For example using them on your email blasts would be beneficial in seeing what users do once they land on your site, without using UTM codes email traffic typically gets grouped into the traffic source abyss of "Direct".
Here's what an example URL with a UTM tracking code looks like:
http://www.examplebedandbreakfast.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=new_year&utm_medium=email
If you want to use a UTM tracking code it just takes a few seconds using this quick free tool:
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Using UTM codes will give Analytics better data so you can make smarter informed digital marketing decisions now and in the future!
Does anyone happen to be using them?.

Click to expand...

I finally just began using them this week for my TA listing and Special Offer. As we all know, since TA switched to https:// no referrals are identified by Analytics.

Momma Smurf said:

himelhochbb said:

One other thing I forgot to mention is the importance of using UTM tracking codes on links to your website so you can track the performance and results of each campaign. For example using them on your email blasts would be beneficial in seeing what users do once they land on your site, without using UTM codes email traffic typically gets grouped into the traffic source abyss of "Direct".
Here's what an example URL with a UTM tracking code looks like:
http://www.examplebedandbreakfast.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=new_year&utm_medium=email
If you want to use a UTM tracking code it just takes a few seconds using this quick free tool:
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Using UTM codes will give Analytics better data so you can make smarter informed digital marketing decisions now and in the future!
Does anyone happen to be using them?.

Click to expand...

I finally just began using them this week for my TA listing and Special Offer. As we all know, since TA switched to https:// no referrals are identified by Analytics.
.

Click to expand...

Correct - if your site is not secure yet tripadvisor traffic will get thrown into the Direct category abyss where you can't track anything. So you would either need to use a UTM tracking url on your profile or migrate your site over to https.
Here's a handy chart for whether or not your referral traffic will be tracked in analytics:
http to http = referrer passed
http to https = referrer passed
https to http = referrer blocked
https to https = referrer passed

Momma Smurf said:

himelhochbb said:

One other thing I forgot to mention is the importance of using UTM tracking codes on links to your website so you can track the performance and results of each campaign. For example using them on your email blasts would be beneficial in seeing what users do once they land on your site, without using UTM codes email traffic typically gets grouped into the traffic source abyss of "Direct".
Here's what an example URL with a UTM tracking code looks like:
http://www.examplebedandbreakfast.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=new_year&utm_medium=email
If you want to use a UTM tracking code it just takes a few seconds using this quick free tool:
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Using UTM codes will give Analytics better data so you can make smarter informed digital marketing decisions now and in the future!
Does anyone happen to be using them?.

Click to expand...

I finally just began using them this week for my TA listing and Special Offer. As we all know, since TA switched to https:// no referrals are identified by Analytics.
.

Click to expand...

Momma Smurf said:

I finally just began using them this week for my TA listing and Special Offer. As we all know, since TA switched to https:// no referrals are identified by Analytics.

Click to expand...

I did this last year. Not a lot of traffic clicking those links. I had all kinds of things I tried - special pricing, recipes, free passes, best price direct, packages - still not much traffic.
But, at least with the right link you can see what traffic there is and what they're interested in.
One thing I took away from the bazillion phone calls from ta was guests are looking at my area 90 days in advance of arrival.

himelhochbb said:

Momma Smurf said:

himelhochbb said:

One other thing I forgot to mention is the importance of using UTM tracking codes on links to your website so you can track the performance and results of each campaign. For example using them on your email blasts would be beneficial in seeing what users do once they land on your site, without using UTM codes email traffic typically gets grouped into the traffic source abyss of "Direct".
Here's what an example URL with a UTM tracking code looks like:
http://www.examplebedandbreakfast.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=new_year&utm_medium=email
If you want to use a UTM tracking code it just takes a few seconds using this quick free tool:
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Using UTM codes will give Analytics better data so you can make smarter informed digital marketing decisions now and in the future!
Does anyone happen to be using them?.

Click to expand...

I finally just began using them this week for my TA listing and Special Offer. As we all know, since TA switched to https:// no referrals are identified by Analytics.
.

Click to expand...

Correct - if your site is not secure yet tripadvisor traffic will get thrown into the Direct category abyss where you can't track anything. So you would either need to use a UTM tracking url on your profile or migrate your site over to https.
Here's a handy chart for whether or not your referral traffic will be tracked in analytics:
http to http = referrer passed
http to https = referrer passed
https to http = referrer blocked
https to https = referrer passed
.

Click to expand...

I use a different tracker (Analytics has TMI for me to grasp). It used to give me lovely info on the words searched on. NOW, if they have a Goo account (and who does not?) it does not give the search terms. Every so often I will see a search term. What it DOES tell me is referrer among he other things it tells me that are helpful enough to keep paying them.