Business Website Analytics: What You’re Missing

Episode Summary:

In this engaging episode of Chamber Amplified, hosted by Doug Jenkins from the Findlay-Hancock County Chamber of Commerce, listeners are treated to a discussion with digital analytics expert Philippa Gamse. The episode dives into strategies and insights for making the most out of business websites, emphasizing the role of analytics in driving website value. 

Throughout the episode, Philippa outlines the nuances of understanding website analytics, debunking the myth that merely launching a website automatically results in business growth. She talks about why it's important to have clear website goals and KPIs and highlights the pitfalls of focusing on vanity metrics like visitor numbers. The discussion extends to how analytics can guide business owners in creating a streamlined and effective user experience by understanding visitor behavior and adapting their content accordingly. 

Key Takeaways:

• Analytics are Essential: Businesses need to employ website analytics to understand visitor behavior and metrics beyond just raw traffic numbers.
• Clear Goals and Strategies: Set specific objectives for what your website should achieve and align these goals with your overall business strategy.
• Dynamic Content Optimization: Regularly update and optimize website content—understanding which content leads to user engagement and conversions.
• Uncover Hidden Opportunities: Use analytics to identify potential opportunities for new products or services based on visitor search and interactions.
• The Role of AI and Evolving Technology: Embrace evolving digital tools like chatbots responsibly while ensuring they enhance rather than hinder user experience.

Resources:

• Website Wealth: A Business Leader's Guide to Driving Real Value from your Analytics - Philippa Gamse's book, available at major book retailers.
• 5 Hidden Digital Analytics Gems - An ebook by Philippa Gamse referenced during the episode.

Music and sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

Transcript

0:00:03 - (Doug Jenkins): Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Doug Jenkins from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce. On each episode of Chamber Amplified, we're examining issues impacting the local business community. From employee recruitment and retention, marketing, IT issues. It's really anything that can be impacting your business or the business community as a whole. Our goal is to give the local business community tips each week on at least one way they can improve operations and thrive in the current business environment.

0:00:28 - (Doug Jenkins): So we're sticking with the marketing theme today. We talked about telling your your business story last week. Today we're focusing in on your website. It's a powerful tool in telling your story. You should definitely have a website and maybe you have a website, maybe you just started one. Now what, Automatic profit? Nah, it doesn't really work like that. Philippa Gamse is the author of Website Wealth.

0:00:51 - (Doug Jenkins): We'll link to that in the show notes here. She's going to join us today to talk about why, hey, you've got huge numbers. People are coming to your website in droves. That doesn't really tell the whole story. In fact, if they're coming to your website in droves and nothing really is happening, that's a negative indicator. We'll get into that. We'll also determine help you determine on what you want your website to do and tell some success stories about businesses that did the extra work to figure out what their website numbers mean.

0:01:17 - (Doug Jenkins): Thanks again for tuning in. Remember, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can rate and review the show. It really does help spread the word. Now let's get into it. Joined on the podcast now by Philippa Gamse. She is the author of an ebook that we're going to include in the show Notes five Hidden Digital analytics gems. Philippa, thanks for joining us on the podcast here.

0:01:40 - (Philippa Gamse): Thanks, Doug. And actually I am the author of a real book as well, which has just come out.

0:01:44 - (Doug Jenkins): Oh, tell us about that.

0:01:46 - (Philippa Gamse): Yeah, it's called Website A Business Leader's Guide to Driving Real Value from your Analytics. And it's available at all good bookstores and online of course. But you know, it's really about hopefully what we're about to talk about, which is helping business leaders and business owners to understand why analytics is so important, why you're flying blind if you aren't using them with your website, how to think about it and some of the amazing insights that you can get that you there's no way that you could otherwise get this information that have led for me with my clients to opportunities for New products, services, target markets, etc. Right.

0:02:26 - (Philippa Gamse): The book is entirely in English. Hopefully we're going to be talking English here. Right. But the idea is it's not a technical book because there's plenty of technical stuff online. But so many people just glaze over when they see that stuff, which I totally understand. So, you know, if you want a really simple, easy to read guide to why you should care about analytics in English with lots of stories and examples, that's my goal.

0:02:48 - (Doug Jenkins): All right. And we will put a link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah, no worries. This is all going to be in English. My French is a little rusty because I haven't spoken some high school French and that was some time ago. But talking about this in real world terms and not getting down into the minutia and all of the technical terms when it comes to really dissecting what your website is doing for you is exactly what I wanted to get into today.

0:03:13 - (Doug Jenkins): We've tried to drill at home with our members and businesses in our region that you got to have a website, you need to have one. But I think sometimes, especially smaller businesses. All right, I'm going to put one up on wix or Squarespace or whatever the case may be. All right. I've got my website and now Profit. And that's not how that works. For the small business owner who maybe just launched a website, what are the key things that they want to be monitoring?

0:03:42 - (Philippa Gamse): It's a great question because in a lot of ways it depends. I hate generic answers to those kinds of questions. And I actually talk in the book about why, because to me, the key to getting something useful out of your analytics is to really understand what your business is about and what your website is about and what it's trying to do. So don't just put up the website. Think about if people come to this website, what do I want them to do? Right. So maybe you want them to call you, maybe you want them to sign up for your newsletter. I mean, if you're not actually directly selling online.

0:04:14 - (Philippa Gamse): Right. But there are things that you want them to. You don't just want to look at it, think this is pretty or not pretty or whatever and walk away, right?

0:04:22 - (Doug Jenkins): Hopefully, most definitely.

0:04:24 - (Philippa Gamse): So. Right. So for every part of your site, every page of your site, you should be really clear about what's going on here. Who do I want to see this? What do I want them to do? If you're making video, and video these days is such a top way of communicating with people. Right. But now with analytics, for example, you know, lots of people, they make videos and they don't think too much about how the video flows.

0:04:48 - (Philippa Gamse): They started out and it's kind of boring. And with analytics, well, but this is a problem, Mike, because with analytics, you can see how much of a video or a podcast people actually consume. And you'd be amazed how many people watch. The first 10 seconds are like, nah, right. But. And so, but if you're the content provider, if you're making those videos, you want to know what, what people enjoy and will use to learn more about your business.

0:05:14 - (Philippa Gamse): So you just need to think about, what are my strategies, what are my goals, what am I trying to do here? Because then you can go to the numbers, or you can get somebody like me to go to the numbers for you and say, okay, how am I doing making that happen? If you're just looking at a whole page of charts and graphs and heaven knows what, and, you know, you're trying to make sense of it, it's not going to, you are going to glaze over because there's just so many numbers. It's just ridiculous.

0:05:41 - (Philippa Gamse): And if you're looking for questions like, you know, vanity, what we call vanity questions, did I have more visitors this week than I did last week? It's a pretty actually meaningless question because, okay, yes, you did. That's lovely. But so what did more of those visitors do what you wanted them to do? Because if you're getting like thousands and thousands of visitors, but none of them are doing what you want them to do, all those visitors are a waste of time.

0:06:06 - (Philippa Gamse): So you're looking for the right kind of visitor, doing the things you want them to do, and having a really good understanding of what that is, is going to help you then get, get through the numbers.

0:06:18 - (Doug Jenkins): It almost seems like those numbers, like, let's just say it's homepage visits or whatever on the main page, whatever your, your main site address is, if you see a big number there, but it doesn't necessarily translate into sales, or they don't go elsewhere on your site, or they don't click on a more information man or whatever it is, it's almost. The information is what you're getting is telling you, okay, something's not working. It's almost, almost like a negative indicator in that, in that degree.

0:06:52 - (Philippa Gamse): Exactly. And that's one of the big things, challenges I see with homepages on small businesses. So exactly that, you know, your homepage is, is basically to say, hi, welcome, and here I am. Here's what I do here's what you need to look at. Maybe your, your main kind of service descriptions are on a different page. If everybody comes to your homepage and then they don't go any further, then you've wasted all your effort in getting those people if they're not, you know, unless they've literally come there to find out your phone number or something like that. You know, one of the other things that analytics can be very helpful for, for example, is that right now we're seeing a lot of very long pages.

0:07:28 - (Philippa Gamse): So you scroll a long way down. And maybe that's designed kind of for people on mobile, kind of swiping and everything. But there's two points there, actually. One is you hear about everybody's on mobile now. And I still see plenty of sites where that isn't the case. And actually, one of the things you can tell in most analytics programs is the device. So, you know, did somebody come to your site on a mobile phone or on a desktop or a laptop? Right.

0:07:55 - (Philippa Gamse): And if it's a B2B site, they're maybe more likely to be there on a, on a, on a desktop. And that's useful information before you panic and think everybody's on mobile and it, you know, it's not working. So that's why I'm saying don't take generic advice. Verify for your own site. But if people, if your pages are long, then another thing that I see a lot of is where people don't scroll. So they scroll a little bit and then they stop.

0:08:22 - (Philippa Gamse): And if that's the case, again, you can customize your analytics so it tells you exactly how far down people are going. And that will tell you if people are generally missing really important content, because you've got it further down your page. But very, very few people get that far because that's, again, important for you to know if it's important content they should see or if you've got an important call to action there, you want to move it, you want to repeat it, you want to do something different, because the vast majority of visitors aren't seeing it.

0:08:51 - (Philippa Gamse): So this is the kind of stuff, and this is why analytics are important, because there's no way you could know this without looking at those numbers. You can't tell that just by looking at the website.

0:09:00 - (Doug Jenkins): You got to dig just a little bit deeper. The numbers are a jumping off point, essentially.

0:09:06 - (Philippa Gamse): Well, and the numbers should make you ask more questions about what you're doing and give you some ideas about what you could do differently.

0:09:12 - (Doug Jenkins): One of the. I was listening to you on a different podcast a little earlier today. And one of the interesting points that, that you talked about was the people aren't always coming in through your main page either. They might find your sales page first, depending on how they. If they jumped in from either a social media page or through Google or Bing or whatever, they're not always coming in the place that you might think they're coming in.

0:09:39 - (Doug Jenkins): How does someone, a small business with a website, attack their website knowing that that's the case?

0:09:46 - (Philippa Gamse): So it. Well, first of all, they may be coming in on those pages. First of all, you want to know why. So it could be that you're running ads to that page. That's pretty obvious, obviously. Or, you know, your email newsletter links to that page. Or maybe they're finding that page in. In search, like in Google and coming to. So you want to know, like, why are they coming here? Obviously if it's an ad, you're paying for it. So you want to make sure that that page is doing its job, which is get them engaged. And again, pointing what you want them to do if they're coming there through search. It might be a bit more of a kind of something that you're not necessarily controlling so much because you can't always control which, which of your pages Google lists for what keywords and so on.

0:10:24 - (Philippa Gamse): So you again, you want to think about what's the visitor trying to do here? Why are they here? What was their intent in seeing this page and making sure that that page meets that, that need. And again, if it needs to direct them somewhere else, that it's going to do that. So it's really about trying to get inside the head of your visitor, understand what's going on for them, and then making sure that that particular page is meeting those needs or directing them to where they can get those needs met.

0:10:53 - (Doug Jenkins): I like thinking about it. That's almost like doing a little detective work. It kind of seems fun to do it that way. But I have to imagine as a business owner, people will say, look, I don't have time to do this, and shouldn't I have someone doing this, like my web designer or someone like that? That's probably a common fallacy, I would imagine.

0:11:12 - (Philippa Gamse): So you, you need to be careful because a, no, you shouldn't necessarily be doing this. And actually my book makes that really clear. I don't expect business owners to be able to do this. I mean, I don't do my taxes. I have my accountant do them. No already, because, you know, I have no idea how to, and I don't want to make a mistake and have to pay more than etc. But if this is not something that excites you, then don't, don't do it. You do need as a business owner and as I said before, to be really clear about what your goals and your strategies are.

0:11:39 - (Philippa Gamse): That's your job, right? That is your job. But getting or teasing all this stuff out maybe isn't your job if it doesn't, if it doesn't excite you. But go to the right person to help you answer those questions because it is a fallacy. You know, web designers should not take the blame. This is not what they do. The interesting thing to me about digital marketing is that there's so many different skills involved in digital marketing. You know, you've got the web designers, you've got the content marketing people who create content, right? You've got people who are really good at creating ads or doing search engine optimization.

0:12:11 - (Philippa Gamse): You know, there are, there are some very different skills in digital marketing and analytics is, is in many ways a skill in and of itself. And there are a lot of people who might say they dabble in it. You know, your agency might be telling you they can do analytics, but make sure they're giving you actual actionable, useful and not just. You got more visitors this week than you did last week, so to get the right help.

0:12:36 - (Doug Jenkins): Yeah. Well, you mentioned the search engine optimization and I have to imagine if, like I have a widget factory and I'm more concerned about the quality control on that and making sure they get shipped everywhere. I got to have my website. Search engine optimization is something that's changed over I think 10 times since it became a term, however long ago. You definitely want somebody dealing with that for you unless you have some specific training on it.

0:13:02 - (Doug Jenkins): It's, it's something that I don't want to say it's hard, but it takes some time to make your website fine tuned for that, right?

0:13:10 - (Philippa Gamse): And again, you want the person with the right skills. Especially now since AI is taking over so much of search, you want to get somebody who knows how to handle that. And that's not me, I should be really clear. And that's what I'm saying. There are different specializations, but to me, if you've invested in your website and especially if you want your website to do things for you, like get you leads, make you sales, right, Tell people more about what you do so you know they can trust you, then whatever you're investing in that site, if you're not working it, then you really are. You're flying blind and you're wasting all of that investment.

0:13:44 - (Philippa Gamse): And that's the truth. I mean, wouldn't you want to be growing your business and, you know, not just sort of letting it go and whatever happens, happens?

0:13:54 - (Doug Jenkins): And I think I know the answer to this, but I'm curious your thoughts. I think some business owners still look at a website as it's just this thing I gotta do. And they don't really look at it as this is a thing that can really, really help us move the business forward.

0:14:10 - (Philippa Gamse): And again, I mean, I do think there are some, I mean, you know, for example, if you work in the government or the public sector, I think a lot of the time, you know that this is not how you get your business. There's a whole different process to it. Right. You know, there are some industries where maybe it's, it is less important. But in general, you know, if people find you, they don't know who you are, they haven't heard of you, they're going to check you out. What are they going to do? They're going to look for your website.

0:14:35 - (Philippa Gamse): And actually one of the things that you should have on your site to that point is an About Us page. Because it's amazing that I see, I still see this an awful lot. You know, if people don't know who you are and you say this is what we do and we're absolutely brilliant at it and all that, but they want to know, well, who are you? Who are your people? How long have you been in business? Business, what's your expertise? You know, show me that you know what you're doing.

0:14:59 - (Philippa Gamse): And that About Us page for new visitors is a really important page. So don't forget that one.

0:15:06 - (Doug Jenkins): That actually dovetails perfectly with our previous episode of the podcast. We were talking, where we were talking about how businesses should tell their stories because people have, they, if they form an emotional connection with the business, they're more likely to do something with you. They might follow you, they might buy something from you, something like that. So I think that's great advice not to skip that section.

0:15:28 - (Doug Jenkins): Let's, let's talk a little bit about success stories. Where have you seen businesses make a tangible difference in, you know, they, they made some tweaks to their website, they monitor the analytics a little bit more, they made the deductions that they needed to make or they kind of figured out what the numbers meant. What has that meant for some businesses that you've worked with?

0:15:49 - (Philippa Gamse): Oh, it's Huge. I mean, just getting people to move around the site the way you want them to, you know, making. Getting rid of things that are just in their way. I mean, maybe you have a contact form and people aren't completing it because it's just too long. So understanding that it's too long, taking some of the stuff out, that kind of thing. The thing that I find exciting about analytics is that once you fix the obvious problems, it's also possible to actually discover opportunities for new products or services.

0:16:20 - (Philippa Gamse): For example, if you look at what's in the internal. If you have a site search on your site, if you have any sort of content, lot of content, or you're. You've got different items on your site, you know, obviously you want some sort of search function so people can find what they're looking for easily. And it's amazing. If you look at what people. Now you can track what people are putting into that search.

0:16:42 - (Philippa Gamse): So this is the search on your site, not this, not Google or anything like that. And that will tell you what they're looking for. It will tell you what language, what wording, what terms they use to describe what they think you should have. And if you're in an industry where there's a lot of technical jargon that will tell you if they understand, you know, do they speak your language, your techie language, or not? Because it may be that you need to. Dumb, not dumb down. That's the wrong word. But maybe you should use, you know, some more English terminology if your buyers are not familiar with, with the terminology that you're using.

0:17:15 - (Philippa Gamse): There's a lot of industries with a lot of terminology. Right. But also, and I, you know, there are some stories in my book that illustrate this. I've seen examples where people are searching for stuff that could be within that business's area of expertise, but that they don't currently provide. And that might be. I've seen information products created that way. You know, where you create like an ebook or a manual or a guide that you can sell as well as actual new physical products or different offerings or different target markets.

0:17:53 - (Philippa Gamse): So once you've kind of got your website humming along and you've solved all the problems about people aren't scrolling and people aren't clicking and this kind of stuff, then you can move into the. Okay, and now what can we do? And are there more things that we could do with this that we haven't thought about?

0:18:09 - (Doug Jenkins): And that's kind of the sweet spot to be in there. Once you, once you have things the way you want them to be. Now you get to be creative with the business again. And I think that's where a lot of people enjoy being. One last question for you. In terms of you mentioned, like the search bar that you can put on your website, which is, I think, always a good idea. We do see a lot of websites now using like AI chatbots, which work somewhat similar. They're a little bit more language intuitive, but it seems like there are analytics to be gained through that as well. Have you seen success with those? Or can those be a whole? Or is that a little bit of a different ball game?

0:18:43 - (Philippa Gamse): Yeah, I think that is. And I think that, well, the problem with chatbots is that they're great until they're not. I mean, you know, I think a really good chatbot, like, if the person asks a question that the chatbot doesn't understand or can't respond to, it's helpful if it has a way to get hold of a human being pretty quickly. Because I know, I'm sure we've all been in those loops where the chat box says, I don't know what you're talking about, and you get frustrated.

0:19:10 - (Doug Jenkins): Right.

0:19:11 - (Philippa Gamse): Or it keeps offering you answers that aren't relevant or not what you want to hear. But of course, at the same time, understanding what people put into the chat again can give you great sort of qualitative feedback about your service. What problems people are having, what they can't find, what they can't do. Again, obviously, if it's a very common problem, like, I don't know, I forgot my password or something like that, you know, where an automated process can handle it, that's great. But I think you just need to handle with care and make sure that it's aiding the user experience and not getting in their way.

0:19:46 - (Doug Jenkins): So once people have everything set up on their website, it's going, they're getting the numbers they want and everything. I guess the important thing to remember is, and this is why you need somebody working for you to analyze all these things, is the web is always changing. And what worked today and maybe works a couple months from now, who knows if a year from now it's still working? So it's definitely never a set it and forget it type of deal.

0:20:12 - (Philippa Gamse): Right? That's absolutely true. And at the same time, what's very interesting is that some stuff is email was invented in 1977, which means it's nearly 50 years since we've had email. Right. And I, I mean, there's been so many place times when people have said oh, email's dead. Nobody uses it anymore. Millennials, you know, they, they don't use it. But when you look at what marketers say when they get surveyed about, you know, what's your favorite marketing tactic?

0:20:38 - (Philippa Gamse): Email is still way ahead. And, you know, you can't, you can't have AI taking over email because in the same way that it's taken over search, you know, because each email is, is created by that company and it's, it's unique and different. So, so yes, there are things that change, and obviously you need to be on top of those. And. But I think it's also really good to get really well versed in stuff that is just sort of evergreen.

0:21:05 - (Doug Jenkins): Felipe, we appreciate you joining us here today. Again, the new book is out now and tell us again where people can find that.

0:21:12 - (Philippa Gamse): You can find it at your. Well, obviously on Amazon, but also hopefully on any other kind of bookstore that you use. It's called Website Wealth, A business leader's guide to driving Real value from your analytics. So enjoy.

0:21:27 - (Doug Jenkins): I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Thanks for taking time out of your day to join us.

0:21:31 - (Philippa Gamse): Thank you very much.

0:21:33 - (Doug Jenkins): So personally, I like the idea of doing detective work, of seeing what numbers are showing up on our website and what those mean. That interests me. But if you're running your business and you have a hundred other things on your mind, this is probably something you want to hand off to an expert in the field. I would definitely recommend sitting down with someone who knows a little bit more about this.

0:21:52 - (Doug Jenkins): Have them analyze your site, talk about your goals, figure out what it is you want your website to be doing for you. It's one thing to have the site that's a step in the right direction, but really put that to work for you, and that can make a big, big difference. So again, be sure to check out Philippa's book. The link is in the show notes, and also the ebook is there as well. That'll do it for this week's episode. Chamber Amplified is a free podcast for the community. Thanks to the investment of members in the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.

0:22:21 - (Doug Jenkins): Because of our robust membership, we're able to focus on providing timely information to the Findlay and Hancock county business community. Run leadership programs for adults and teenagers and be an advocate for the area. That's all while providing tools to help local businesses succeed. And if that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, just let me know and we can talk about how an investment in community. The Chamber helps strengthen the community.

0:22:42 - (Doug Jenkins): If you have any ideas for topics that you'd like to see covered on future episodes, just send me an email. Djenkinsinlayhancockchamber.com thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time on Chamber Amplified from the Findlay Hancock County Chamber of Commerce.