On this episode we talk about how you can use your Google Analytics to inform your decision making and improve your nonprofit or foundation website.

About Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that can help you analyze your nonprofit's website traffic. First of all, you're going to want to see if you have Google Analytics set up on your website. Does your current site have a Google Analytics installed? See resources below for tools to check your site if you're not sure.

Overview data you should be tracking (Audience > Overview)

• Traffic (how many visitors per month)
• How long do they stay on your site?
• How high is your bounce rate?
• How many pages do they visit?

More info about your audience

• You can see if the traffic you are getting is from the geographic area that your nonprofit or foundation is serving (Audience > Geo > Location)
• Languages your audience is using (Audience > Geo > Language)
• Whether your audience is using mobile versus desktop versus table. If your audience is primarily coming to you via mobile, how friendly is your mobile experience? (Audiences > Mobile > Overview)

How are your visitors getting to your site? (Acquisition > Overview)

• Organic - they find you from search (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc)
• Referral - they get to your site from a link on another website
• Direct traffic - they type in the URL or have bookmarked a page (or their computer browser remembers the page)
• Social media traffic - coming from social media
• Email traffic - coming from email marketing
• Your traffic should be a nice mix. This is an area you can work on each month to increase certain areas.

Content!! (Behavior > Site Content)

• What content on your site gets the most visits? In order to see trends, you'll need to have pages broken down by individual types of content. For example, if you list all of your programs on one page, you won't be able to see what programs are getting the most interest. This is where having built a site with data in mind helps immensely
• Are there trends? Can you create additional content around these trends that provide additional valuable information to your audiences.
• Are there any opportunities to add resources or types of programming to your site?

Take Action:

• Make sure Google Analytics is installed on your site and if not, do so immediately.
• Pull Google Analytics reports on a monthly basis and take the time to review the data
• Look for patterns and start making incremental improvements to your nonprofit's website

Resources:

SEOSite Test

Monster Insights - Google Analytics

Getting Started with Google Analytics