Data security, and privacy is a big deal these days. But what you might, or might not be aware of is what your website tells you about your customers.
This article assumes you have Google Analytics installed on your website. Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google, and around 75% of all websites have it installed. It provides website owners with some crucial information about their visitors. For example; which pages they have looked at, how long they stayed on the site, which page they entered from and which page they left on. However, there are some more details about individual users, which can give you some strategic insight into your visitors.
Age & Sex
Yes… you can see how old your visitors are, and their sex. This info allows you to gain an understanding of which demographics are finding your site the most interesting, and crucially which types are most likely be to convert into customers. See the sample below;
As you can see, on this sample site, the majority of visitors were between 35-44, and were male. So how does this help you? Lets drill down a little deeper.
The above sample data looks at conversion rate. This data shows us that people between ages 18 and 24 are much more likely to purchase (11%) than all other age groups. A couple of ways you can use this information;
- Edit your Facebook campaigns to target users who are between the 18-24 age group
- Create a targeted Adwords campaign, and increase your bids slightly to those within the targeted age group.
Think about it like this….if you know people between 18 and 24 are more likely to purchase from you, why not shift the majority of your marketing budget to those demographics?
Affinity
The affinity data stored within Google Analytics lets you see what your customers enjoy, and do not enjoy. For example, take a look at the data below;
“How does this help?” I hear you say. Well, next time you are struggling to think of the topic for a blog post…take a look at the infinity data in Google Analytics. In the example above, it would be good to write some blog posts relating to TV and Movies, as it is more likely to interest the readers and get shared. You can also use this data within Google Adwords to target specific interests. it might be for example that people who surf your site and have an interest in ‘Travel’, are less likely to purchase your products and are simply browsing….and thus you could reduce your bids.
Location
Knowing where your site visitors are located is another important piece of information you should be analysing from your Adwords account. You can see not only the country, or continent, but the city or town your visitors are in. This can be extremely useful data, and is available in a visual format as you can see in the screenshot below.
This can allow you to target not only your online advertising, but also offline. If you know visitors in a particular region are more engaging with your site, then it would make total sense to target those areas in any offline advertising campaigns you have running. Perhaps switching from National to Regional newspapers for example.
Big Brother Is Watching
Yup, without a doubt big brother is alive and well, and watching every website you and your customers visit. It is watching how long you stay on those sites, what you search for, what you purchase, when you do it, and where you do it from. As this data continues to be available to advertisers and website owners, it is crucial that you read it, analyse it, and take action on your findings. If you don’t, your competitors certainly will be doing.