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Google Analytics for Multiple Locations: Scaling the mountain of data

The mountain of data collected by Google Analytics can, at times, seem endless. Just the simple phrase “web analytics” is often enough to make some people sweat. Monitoring referring websites, assessing keyword reports, tracking conversions, identifying navigation paths, and setting goals can be very overwhelming. This is especially true if your business has multiple business locations, market areas, divisions, or franchise stores to keep track of individually. In these instances, instead of a mountain of data, you have a mountain RANGE of data to navigate to climb.

The first and most important step to making your data useful is to define goals. (If your website was properly thought through, you have most likely already determined these goals.) Without knowing what it is that you want your site visitors to do, the data is just that: data - begging to be interpreted and applied. Think of a “goal” as any action that you want visitors to complete before leaving your site. These actions implicitly hold more value than a plain, old “page view”. The goals Blind Acre establishes for our clients range from making a purchase or submitting a contact form, to downloading specific content or following a set progression of page views with the site. And there can be many different types of goals within a single website, or even a single page.

In instances where business owners and marketing teams are tracking analytics for multiple business locations or business divisions, consider the following:

1.) Evaluate and define the objective(s) for each page of your website, and set goals accordingly. Though an established best practice, this is even more important for those analyzing traffic data for multiple business locations. Do not assume that the purpose of every page – or even similar pages – will be the same. The objective of one page may be to sell a specific product, with goals focused on shopping cart additions and purchases/conversions. Conversely, the objective of another page may be to inform, with goals focused on page views and average time on site. Find the most relevant key performance indicator(s) per objective.

2.) Check any possible preconceived notions at the door. With various sites targeting visitors in any number of cities, states and/or countries, your per-page traffic data will be unique no matter the breadth of your website management portfolio. Try to view all data with an open mind, and do not assume that correlations exist prior to digging around. Regional variances – expected or not – may or may not actually exist. Only your data can tell the whole story.

3.) Pay close attention to referral traffic. Google Analytics can help you identify an opportunity for implementing or improving your internal linking strategy, should you notice a void in referral traffic from other websites within your network (other departments, business units, franchises, etc.). When a comprehensive internal linking strategy is in place, it’s likely that your website receives a healthy number of visitors from these sites. Be certain to link to other network sites when appropriate, and strongly encourage them to do the same.

4.) Keywords can help you plan your future marketing efforts. Are the majority of your top-queried keywords devoid of your brand name? Then plan on pushing a general awareness campaign in the coming months to increase the interest in and recognition of your brand. On the other hand, are your visitors’ keywords all about the brand but little else? Then push for optimization to make sure your current site content, as well as any new content, is well optimized for relevant, unbranded terms. Always strive for a mix of traffic from both branded and unbranded queries.

With a clear, comprehensive web analytics strategy, you will be able to use the data Google Analytics provides most effectively to identify key content, most successful calls to action, and highest-performing areas of your business. It is then simple a matter of refining your content strategy and outbound marketing communication efforts to match the “hot buttons” of your different customer segments.

Use Google Analytics to scale your mountain of web data! We promise there will be no goats… If you end up needing a Sherpa, give us a call!

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Google Analytics for Multiple Locations: Scaling the mountain of data

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