Google Analytics 101 for Real Estate

This post comes to us from the WebsiteBox blog:

Google Analytics is a great tool for you to understand who is visiting your site and how they are using it. It can also help you figure out what changes you can make on your site to boost business. In order to turn all that great data Google Analytics provides you with into actionable insights which can help you improve your business, you must learn the basic terms and functions so that you can use the tool effectively.

Unlike billboard or flyer advertising, any marketing efforts you make on the web can be completely monitored. Sure you can use a coupon code to track the success of your flyer, or ask people if they heard about you from your billboard ad, but you cannot tell how long someone looked at the ad for--or what steps they took after they saw the ad that lead to them calling you.

It is also very tedious to track every inquiry you get from a print ad manually. Sometimes you are on the phone and it is hard to get to an Excel sheet to input the data. You may be so involved in the conversation you are having with your lead that you forget to ask them how they found out about you. The solution is to invest in web advertising which can all be tracked using the Google Analytics tool.

In order to get started with Google Analytics, you have to install the tracking code they provide you with. If you are using WebsiteBox for your website, you can copy and paste the code using the Analytics App. Once you have installed the code in your site, it will take about 24 to 48 hours for Analytics to start monitoring the traffic from your site.

Make sure you set up a goal with Analytics so that you can track the specific amount of leads your website is generating. A good goal to create and track is how many of the site's visitors filled out an inquiry form. The next step to setting up Analytics effectively is to link your Google Analytics account with all your current internet advertising, such as Adwords. You can find a complete checklist on setting up Google Analytics here.

The most important aspect of Analytics is becoming familiar with the terms. These are the key terms you need to know because the statistics they represent play a major role in determining the success of your website.

• Visits - The total number of times your website has been visited.
• Unique Visits - The total number of unduplicated visits to your site. This could mean a completely new visitor to your site or it could also be someone who has visited your site before visiting you from a different source (i.e., they visited your site using their computer and tablet, which counts as two unique visits).
• Bounce Rate - The percentage of visitors who came to your site, saw a single page and left.
• % New Visits - The percentage of first time visits to your site.
• % Exit Rate - The percentage of site exits that occurred from a specific page.

This is just an introduction to Analytics and the basic terms you need to know. Read the next article in this series, Google Analytics 102: Understanding the Data, to learn more.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.