Category: Analytics

This blog category is dedicated to helping businesses better understand the power of analytics. Here, we discuss the importance of data analysis and reporting, methods for tracking and analyzing performance metrics, current trends in the analytics industry, and other strategies for using analytics to inform decision-making.

Manage Important Business Information with Google Business

Most business owners will find that it’s quite easy to jump into the Google Business platform and get started connecting your important business information with potential valuable customers. Keep reading below for a breakdown of what you can do with the updated Google My Business platform.

The Basics of Google Business

Start with the name of your business, determine the categories your business falls under, where your service location is, what your hours (& special hours) are, your business phone #, add a link to your website, and add interesting business photos (Interior, Exterior, At Work, Your Team, & Identity).

Completely filling out the basics of your Google Business profile is very important and will help potential customers searching at various times of day, in different locations, and for various reasons to reach your business if it matches what they are expecting.

I’d recommend starting with the basics and you will be ahead of most of your competition. Once you have that complete, then you can focus on some of the more advanced features that Google offers.

Create a post on Google Business

Visiting the Posts link on the side of your Google Business will bring up a news-feed status update input box where you can post important updates. I have not posted anything yet, but as soon as I am done writing this on my blog, I will post a link. I clicked on the LEARN MORE link and got an overview of what I should be doing:

Posting through Google Business lets you publish your events, products, and services directly to Google Search and Maps. By creating posts, you can place your timely content in front of customers when they find your business listing on Google.

This is great that Google is now allowing business owners to post directly through this business portal. As long as the business owner has claimed their profile and linked everything together including Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, and other properties, they should all play very well together.

Understand Import Insights About Your Business

Where do your customers come from? Do they find your local listing on the right side of the page, do they find your organic listing? Perhaps you are paying for traffic by using Google Adwords? With the Insights tab in Google My Business you can discover how your customers search for your business. You will understand if they have viewed your information directly through Search of via Maps. Important business information including whether a customer visited your website, asked for directions, viewed your photos, and how many customers called are all available at a quick glance.

Manage Your Google Business Reviews

“Digital Word of Mouth” is one of the most important local search ranking factors and will likely influence whether a potential customer will contact you or your competition. Google makes it easy for business owners to discover what their customers have written about them.

Your customers will rate your business on a 1-5 star scale and they may also leave written comments. You will receive a notification when a customer writes a review and the Google My Business platform makes it very easy to respond.

Google reviews are increasingly important and it’s very important for you to incorporate a strategy that includes asking your customers for feedback and providing an easy means to do so.

Message with Your Customers

Directly communicate with potential customers. Providing real-time access to the business owner will likely allow the business owners who are able to respond quickly an advantage over those who haven’t activated this feature and must use traditional methods.

I’m excited to be able to manage my Google business information in one easy place. Google Business has evolved in the past few years into a platform for businesses to easily manage their vital business information and understand key performance indicators that will help them succeed.

December 16, 2022
5 Informative (And Free!) Web Design Tools That Can Teach You More About Your Site
Above all, websites are vehicles designed to help you achieve larger goals. For example, a restaurant’s site might be created to increase awareness and encourage patrons to visit (or order takeout). An entrepreneur might rely on a website to inform potential clients about his or her services.

While a website is an ideal tool for online marketing in the 21st century, there’s no guarantee it’ll work the way you intended. Website design requires constant monitoring, updating, and adjusting in order to ensure a site is optimized for performance.

In order to be able to make the right adjustments, you have to first gather accurate information about your site’s functionality. Fortunately, there are a plethora of online web design tools that provide insightful and in-depth data about a site’s performance. Let’s take a look at a few you should know about.
1. SEMRush
Touted by many online marketers as the premier and most comprehensive online marketing tools, SEMRush offers users an in-depth analysis of their site’s advertising information.

It offers data regarding paid and organic search traffic, domain referrals, backlinks, and more. This is all available in SEMRush’s free report, although you can unlock an even more extensive review for the paid version.

Despite being advertised as an all-in-one platform, SEMRush probably won’t eliminate the need to use other online web tools. Still, it’s a great place to start your advertising research.
1. ScanWP
If you know a site is running WordPress but aren’t sure which theme, that’s where ScanWP comes in handy. Simply plug in the URL of the site, hit “search”, and you’ll be provided with a host of helpful information such as the theme version, price, associated tags, and where the theme can be purchased.

ScanWP even comes with Plugin detection so you can get a better idea of what’s been added to the site. Compared to other online web design tools, ScanWP is rather minimal but that’s one of its advantages too! It’s a great option for WordPress fans and can even be downloaded as an extension for Chrome browser for integrated use.
1. Nibbler
Nibbler isn’t as well known as some other online web design tools, but it still earns a spot on the list. With the free version, you can put five different pages through the Nibbler tests which analyzes your site based on more than a dozen factors and offers an overall score.

The total score (out of 100%) is an aggregate rating of your site’s accessibility, experience, technology, marketing, and more. In addition to this composite score, you’ll get a deeper breakdown of each factor, giving you a better look at your site’s strengths and weaknesses.

Nibbler even offers a handy list of top priorities for improving your site.
1. GTmetrix
GTmetrix is an informative online web design tool that analyzes a site’s page performance. Whether you’re trying to improve search engine optimization (SEO) or implementing a new theme, it’s always important to know how site changes are impacting overall functionality.

In its “speed visualization” section – pictured above – GTmetrix provides an insightful breakdown of how quickly (or slowly) your site loads by second. This gives you a better idea of how users interact with your site.

This online web design tool’s report page acts as an analytics dashboard where key indicators of site load speed are neatly organized and summarized. Similar to Nibbler, you’ll also get actionable tips for improving your site page speed.
1. Pagelocity
Customer experience is an integral component of website design. If you’re looking for a web design tool that’s geared towards analyzing your site’s optimization in this area, Pagelocity is an excellent choice. Its analysis focuses on three different categories: on-page SEO, performance, and code insights.

On-page SEO offers insights into various factors on your site that are critical to SEO such as headings, keywords, and links (both internal and external). Performance analyzes your site’s composition including scripts, style files, and images to determine its overall functionality. Lastly, Code Insights goes a little more in-depth to look at a site’s markup which refers to tags, classes, and page speed.

Your Local Web Design Expert

If you’re not sure how your website is performing, David Martin Design can help. With decades of experiencing building, designing, and optimizing sites, David knows what it takes to keep websites up and running efficiently to meet your goals. Feel free to contact David to learn more.
February 15, 2021
What’s Microsoft Clarity and How Can It Help Improve Your Website?

Picture this: You build an amazing site for your business and set it live. A few weeks pass by, and you eagerly check to see how many people visited your site. Despite receiving some decent traffic, you want to take immediate steps to improve these numbers but…you have no idea how to do it.

Many site owners find themselves in the exact same position. Even with ample data about their site performance, they’re still not sure how to iron out the kinks to offer users a seamless experience. Microsft Clarity just might be the tool to help solve this problem.

Here, we’ll take a deep look into what Clarity offers and how your website can benefit from it.

What is Microsoft Clarity?

Microsoft Clarity is a specialized analytics tool designed to help site owners gain a better understanding of how visitors interact with their site. With informative features such as heatmaps and session replays, Clarity can offer a unique view of your site’s performance that other popular tools such as Google Analytics simply don’t offer.

By tracking user behavior on your site, Clarity collects basic information regarding engagement, interactions, and sessions. This data is conveniently summarized in the dashboard, giving you quick and up-to-date statistics about your site. Users are broken down into various categories such as country and device type for more detailed insights.

What does Microsoft Clarity offer?

It’s no secret that some site analytics tools can take some getting used to. Fortunately, the simple layout of Microsoft Clarity and its relatively straightforward function make for a more user-friendly experience.

To get a better idea of what this newer tool offers, let’s dissect Clarity’s primary features.

Dashboard and Insights

The Microsoft Clarity dashboard acts as a central hub where all of your site’s data is collected and organized. Here, you can find standard metrics that most analytics tools provide including total sessions, unique users, pages per session, and engagement.

A quick glance at the Clarity dashboard will reveal some intriguing markers that you might not be familiar with. Dead clicks, rage clicks, and excessive scrolling are special insights designed to help site owners pinpoint problem areas that might be preventing visitors from having an optimal user experience.

If you’ve ever had a webpage freeze or refuse to load quicker than dial-up, you understand why “rage clicks” and “excessive scrolls” are the perfect indicators of user frustration. Identifying and fixing these problem areas might just be the key to boosting your site’s engagement and conversions.

Session Recording

While distinctive features such as rage clicks do a great job of setting Microsoft Clarity apart from well-established competitors, we’ve just taken a peek into this tool’s diverse bag of tricks. One of the most attractive features of Clarity is its comprehensive session recording application which records user behavior for each and every session. Everything from clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements are recorded and stored.

You can review these clips at any time to get a clear picture of your average user’s behavior. This data is available for each page. For an even deeper understanding, Clarity organizes these recordings by specific browsers to help determine browser-specific issues. With advanced AI, you can even tell whether a particular session is part of a larger pattern or an outlier. This is useful for ruling out anomalies and addressing routine problems.

Heatmaps

While more general analytics can offer a good idea of how users bounce between your site’s pages, Microsoft Clarity takes it a step further by allowing site owners to see how visitors behave on individual pages. With the heatmaps function, you have a clear and informative view of where users tend to click.

This information is further divided by devices such as mobile, tablet, and desktop so you can see how behavior varies between each category. You can use this thorough tool to see how your visitors move around your site, where they’re getting hung up, and what can be done to improve their sessions.

How much does Microsoft Clarity cost?

You’ll be pleased to know that Microsoft Clarity is currently offered as a free service. There’s also no cap on traffic. This means that whether you need to track a newly built site or you want to switch analytics tools on a site that’s already successful, you’ll be paying the exact same amount…nothing!

Is it a replacement for Google Analytics?

While Microsoft Clarity is advertised as an analytics tool, it serves a very specific function. It can give you some insight that Google Analytics can’t, but that doesn’t mean you should say goodbye to your current applications. It works better as an excellent supplement to more comprehensive tools than it does as your primary resource.

Interested in making a site for your next project? Reach out to David Martin Design to learn more about the process. David has decades of experience building sites for business owners and can make a site based on your unique needs.

January 26, 2021