Tag: Google analytics

GA4-vsUA

GA4 vs. Universal Analytics: What’s new in Google Analytics 4?

Posted on | by devops

Google Analytics has undergone an enormous transformation in the last few months. The latest version, GA4 (GA stands for Google Analytics), is vastly different from its previous versions but still has many similarities to Universal Analytics, another name you may have heard regarding Google’s tracking solution. In this article, we’ll compare both versions so you can decide which one is best for your business needs.  

Google Analytics 4 comes with a slew of new features

If you’re used to working in GA3, you’ll see the most significant change: you can no longer access your data through the previous interface. While this may seem like a hassle at first, it means Google has added more features and functionality that will benefit your company in the long run.

First, the math in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is slightly different

When you use GA4, you’ll notice a few things: 

  • The math is more accurate, precise, and faster than the previous version of Analytics. 
  • You may see some different numbers in specific areas of your reports because of this new math. 
  • You can now segment by device type or operating system (e.g., mobile vs. desktop). With Universal Analytics, this was not possible unless you used custom dimensions or segments to do so. 
  • If you have multiple websites set up with GA4, all websites will show up when viewing data across sites in Google Analytics 4 as opposed to just one website showing up with Universal Analytics. Viewing all data for your sites on a single interface allows you to easily see overarching trends and a holistic view of your data. 

GA4 impacts how you access your data

If you’re upgrading from Universal Analytics, there are a few important things to note: 

  • The data is organized differently. While GA1 and GA2 used an Adobe Experience Cloud (AEC) framework, GA3 uses Google Tag Manager (GTM). This means that different types of data points will be accessible in different ways. For example, if you want to see the interaction rate for your site’s home page on desktop browsers, you’ll find it in a completely different place than before! 
  • With GA4, all information is available on your dashboard, which means there are now two ways to view your analytics data: by date range or by dashboard (and sometimes both). Instead of reports, you’ll see dashboards. In Universal Analytics 1 and 2, pulling up your data was like opening an Excel file or PDF report: You could go back and look at any previous month/year/quarter by clicking on a specific date range.

GA4’s new Event-Driven Measurement model takes you outside of the reports page

This is because GA4 is more flexible and scalable than Universal Analytics (UA), meaning it can easily handle larger amounts of data. 

The data model has changed, too: data is organized more like a database than a file folder system. In this database structure, events are now prioritized instead of attached to your dimensions or metrics like they were in UA. This means there are some changes to how you set up event tracking!

GA4 Enhanced Measurement

Enhanced Measurement is the second significant change of GA4. If you’re new to Google Analytics, this will likely be the feature that makes you want to upgrade. 

Enhanced Measurement enables Google Analytics to track all events as they happen on your site—even if they didn’t occur on a page load. This gives you more flexibility and scalability than Universal Analytics ever did; it allows you to track more data without having too much overhead on your servers or slowing down your site for users. In fact, Enhanced Measurement is so powerful that it even lets you track offline conversions like phone calls or emails from visitors who visited your website via an organic search engine result listing (SERP). 

With Enhanced Measurement in place by default with GA4 and some additional configuration changes, most of the work with Universal Analytics has already been done for us! All we need now is Content Groupings or Object Groups—which means everything else in our Marketing Attribution model just got easier too!

GA4’s new Data Model

Those who have experience with databases will recognize this structure as similar. You can think of Google Analytics 4 as if it were an Excel spreadsheet from here on out—except that these keep getting bigger and better over time. 

If you’re considering upgrading to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), now is the time to do it! The new features will help your team work together more efficiently and save time. You won’t have to worry about remembering which numbers you must focus on because they’ll be clearly labeled and distinguished in the reports. And who doesn’t love that?

Agency Partner Interactive

Let our digital marketing experts be your guide as you grow your business. We’re here to help you attract valuable customers, drive sales, and increase leads. Ready to optimize your business with an award-winning media Outbound Marketing Agency? Schedule your consultation now!

bounce_rate_blog

How to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For How to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

If you look at Google Analytics, you can see the number of pages your website visitors have viewed after visiting a specific page on your website. The percentage of website visitors who viewed only a single page then left your website for good, make up your bounce rate. 

On the Internet, we should expect some percentage of our website visitors to bounce. After all, sometimes people click on a link thinking it’s one thing, but it’s actually not what they wanted. But if you have a high bounce rate, such as a bounce rate over 70%, you really need to think about the digital marketing efforts you’ve deployed to drive viewers to your website, and the content you create for them to find.

High bounce rates are one of the reasons our agency works with so many clients on website optimization and refocusing digital marketing efforts. Companies like yours want to drive quality leads to their websites and increase their conversion rates. However, for one reason or another, they’re driving traffic to their website that bounces. 
If you have a high bounce rate, here are some website optimization tips to reduce your bounce rate and boost your conversion rate.

Reduce Your Bounce Rate By Keeping Your Digital Marketing Campaigns Targeted

Digital marketing campaigns can drive a lot of leads. But sometimes, overzealous digital marketing means you drive too many low-quality leads.

Think about this example. Let’s say you make work boots to be used on construction sites, in factories, and in other rugged, outdoor job sites. You have a product line that has extra lining and is perfect for outdoor workers who live where temperatures drop dramatically in the fall and winter. As you’re creating your Google Ads campaign for this shoe line, you may think about including the keyword “Boots for Fall.” But doing so would be too broad of a term, especially considering that boots are very fashionable in the fall season and you could inadvertently drive people to your website looking for boots to complement their outfits, not outfit them for their cold field environment. Instead, you need to include targeted terms like “rugged,” “outdoor,” “job site,” and “construction” to better drive high-quality leads to your website who are less likely to bounce and more likely to boost your conversion rate.

SEO Web Content Can Help You Reduce Your Bounce Rate

SEO – which stands for search engine optimization – is extremely important in driving organic traffic to your website. If you aren’t incorporating relevant keywords tied to your company, products, and brand in your web content – including your websites and blog posts – you aren’t going to get discovered by the people who are really interested in what you have to offer.

Reduce Your Bounce Rate
One of the most important things you can do during website optimization is to update your web content for SEO purposes. To do so, you can:

  • Rely on your most popular Google Ad keywords and incorporate them into your web copy.
  • Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find new relevant keywords to incorporate into your content.
  • Leverage a third-party paid solution for keywords discovering and planning in your website content.

Does this sound like too much work for you to handle in-house? Don’t worry! As a digital marketing agency, we perform SEO website optimization and both find the best keywords for your websites and blogs and create that content, too.

A/B Test Your Web Content to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

As a digital marketing agency, we can’t stress enough just how important it is to A/B test your website. This sort of testing helps you identify the best combination of text and images that work for your website’s design. No matter how creative or on-target you think a new update might be, you don’t know how it’ll perform until it’s up and live.

But if you wipe the slate clean by pushing out new content and abandoning your old content, you run the risk that your new content won’t resonate, and will cause your bounce rate to jump even higher!

Instead, we always recommend you make incremental website changes and A/B test them to see whether the old, or new, performs the best. When it comes to website optimization to reduce your bounce rate, performance isn’t necessarily a conversion but is actually a decreased bounce rate when a viewer lands on that page.

Improve Your Websites Speed to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Today’s Internet users are impatient. Did you know that 53% of mobile website users will bounce if it takes more than three seconds for your website to load? Google knows this too (it’s their statistic) which is why website loading speed is factored into their search algorithm that ranks search results. So, by increasing your website’s load rate, you’re killing two birds with one stone – you’re appeasing impatient mobile searchers and improving your search engine rankings. 

The Google Page Speed tool helps you optimize all your landing pages for high-speed loading. Following best practices for image optimization and caching can help shed time off your website’s loading speed, too.

Use Social Proof to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

If a new website visitor has never heard of you before, they may be skeptical about your product or brand. Sure, you say it’s great, but what do other people have to say about it?

This is why social proof – such as testimonials and badges from organizations you’re a member of or awards you’ve won – is so important. In fact, research shows that 84% of today’s savvy Internet users trust the recommendation of an online stranger just as much as they trust a recommendation from a friend or family member. That’s how important it is to include social proof on your landing pages.

We Can Help You With Website Optimization

Whether you’ve tried optimizing your website to reduce your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate and are spinning your wheels, or you don’t have the internal resources to take on this project yourself, we’re here to help. As a digital marketing agency, we know how to create compelling web content that will keep visitors on your website and trigger them to convert. To start a conversation with us about your company’s needs, call us today at (214) 295-5845.

Not big on reading? That’s okay. Watch “How to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate” instead.

Using the power of Artificial Intelligence, we turned this blog into a video for you. Check it out below!