Three Things that Google Analytics Fall Down On

Visitor Profiles

Analytics can tell you many things about a person visiting your website such as what country they are from and through what page they entered your website. However due to understandable privacy protection laws and legislation; these people remain fairly anonymous in the sense that you do not find out their ages or gender. Due to this, it is difficult to gauge if your intended and targeted audience(s) are reaching your website.

Why these visitors?

Motivation and reasoning are also absent from Google Analytcis in that you can surmise that you have visitors due to your online advertising or curated content; but you cannot deduct whether people came to your website either through curiosity or intent. Setting up attraction strategies are all well and good to gain website hits and visitors, but you are left in the dark as to why exactly these people were attracted to your website – are they simply curious, are they looking for something in particular or are they even your competitors seeing what you are up to? Regardless, you have no definitive answer as to why these visitors are coming to your website.

Why did they only visit and not convert?

Great! A user came to my home page, navigated to my online shop page, browsed products for fifteen minutes, spent four minutes on the testimonials page and then went to the shopping cart and paid for their purchase. Wait! A different user came to my home page, navigated to my online shop page, browsed products for fifteen minutes, spent four minutes on the testimonials page and then left my website. Why? Were my testimonials not good enough? Did they not know where to go from there to pay for their purchase? Did the battery on their device die? Google Analytics cannot give you even hints to the answers to these questions.

While a staple in terms of gauging the effectiveness of your website, it is worth recognising that Analytics still have limits and can never give you insights into 100% of your website. Here at Whelan Web Design, we can create specific measurement guidelines for you and your website to shine a light into any area that you are unsure of. Get in touch with our expert team today to arrange for a consultation.