Are you familiar with Google Analytics and the importance of it on your website? Whether you’re a current customer of OneEach or you’re a future customer doing your due diligence and reading up on our services, we want to give you a little inside scoop on this data tracking tool. Google Analytics is packed full of features that we’re excited to tell you about.
Why Use Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you to understand the types of visitors coming to your site. The best part? It’s free… and here at OneEach Technologies, we embed this tool right into your website for you.
In short terms, Google Analytics (GA for short) helps you with the development of an SEO plan which allows you to monitor the result of the strategies you’re implementing. You can track traffic to your website, form conversions, visitor behaviors, visitor demographics, and even follow the actions your visitors take as they explore your website. With GA, you also can get an in-depth look at your website performance with data tied to your business goals. Now let’s dive into the specifics of why we add this to your website.
Benefits Of Using Google Analytics
- Understand potential donors and supporters better. Google Analytics offers a feature which allows you to enable geographical location. This helps you gain insight on which areas of your nonprofit have the capability to grow in relation to business goals. Additionally, location tracking lets you know where your potential donors and supporters are coming from so you can target them through relevant information and campaigns.
- Goals and business objectives tracking. Once you gain enough insight on these potential donors, Google Analytics lets you set marketing goals. You can even assign monetary value to the tasks and utilize the tools within GA to assess their potential profit.
- Reduce and improve bounce rates. Bounce rate is where a visitor to your website leaves or “bounces” after viewing one page. This can be for a number of reasons, but with Google Analytics, you can understand the reasons to then optimize your website and decrease the bounce rate. You can make these improvements through design, new and engaging content additions, and user experience. By catering to the reasons why visitors bounce and making adjustments, potential donors and supporters are more likely to spend more time on your website.
- See how people find your website. For your nonprofit to be successful, and for your website to work for you, potential donors and supporters need to be able to find it. Google Analytics has a section devoted to giving you information about how website visitors found your site. This is called Acquisition. GA will track the number of visitors to your website through the following methods: organic results (your link showed up in a search), links shared on social media, paid ads, direct searches, and other websites. By utilizing Acquisition, you can understand which of your marketing tactics are working to draw in visitors.
- Track the behavior of visitors. The Behavior section of GA shows which pages visitors come to often, what pages they visit next, and the time spent on your website. This also allows you to understand which pages of your website are the most popular and engaging, which could lead to conversions from “browser” to “donor.” By pinpointing popular pages and user behavior, you can analyze and adjust your strategy to have a broader range of engaging pages.
While these are our top five benefits to using Google Analytics, there’s a slew of reasons beyond this for why OneEach Technologies embeds GA on all of our client websites. These include, but aren’t limited to: data visualization, conversion tracking, ranking improvement, determining viable marketing platforms, and data collection on the demographics of website visitors.
How Can Your Nonprofit Use Data Tracking?
Not only is Google Analytics critical for understanding your nonprofit’s online performance, but it can also help you develop a digital marketing plan that works. It’s one thing to develop a plan based on what you think your community, donors, volunteers, and potential donors want to see, and it’s another thing entirely to base it on what you know they want. GA provides you with the appropriate tools to make sure your marketing and fundraising efforts achieve the desired outcome.
Furthermore, data collection and management are important for nonprofits to measure and assign value to the work being done. Tracking this data means you and your teams can interpret how your products/services affect your constituents. As an added benefit, when you actively use your data, you are better equipped to make decisions with strategy and education, meaning you aren’t taking shots in the dark. You are backed by the numbers.
What a nonprofit needs is funding. Thankfully, tracking and managing your data properly should lead directly to more funding - whether that’s local, government-based, or from private investors. Funding is what keeps a nonprofit operating. The key to keeping this funding steady is catering to what your donors want to see - outcomes associated with them, building a picture of progress, and showing data that backs the work being done and proves the betterment for the community.
The Full Circle Picture
Data gathered through Google Analytics is a powerful tool. It can show you your setbacks and why they happened, it can help you tell your community’s stories, and it can prove the impact your nonprofit is making in the community you serve. At the very least, it will give you a clear picture of your nonprofit end-to-end. If nothing else, these are the types of data your nonprofit should be tracking and can be tracked by Google Analytics. This is why OneEach Technologies installs GA on our client sites. We do it so you can understand your impact, understand your business, and make strategic decisions for your nonprofit backed by numbers. Google Analytics is powerful, but easy to use, making it a no-brainer addition to your website. We’re glad we got to share its amazing benefits with you.
Whether you’re a current customer who wanted a better understanding of this embedded tool, or you’re a prospective customer shopping around, we hope we’ve imparted a sense of confidence. Confidence that you can collect, track, and manage your data, and you can do it with ease (especially because we embed it for you in your website). And, you’ll get training on how to effectively use Google Analytics to boot! Contact us for more information - we’re here to help you!
Update: On July 1, 2023, Google Analytics will stop processing data. For continued website measurement, you should create a new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property. Contact your Account Manager for more information and read our latest blog.