An analytics issue or an analytics opportunity?
Are you concerned that suboptimal design is costing you clients, or that an ineffective page is driving users away? These are crucial questions, and we’re here to provide insights. This guide dives into how analytics can strengthen your business strategies, offer clear, actionable advice, and greatly improve the potential of your conversion rate optimization strategy.
To master the game, you need an action plan
In the world of digital marketing, every tactical decision plays a critical role. The key to success is not just having a strategy but understanding the playing field deeply. Analytics is not merely a tool; it’s a pivotal player that helps you better understand your environment and enables you to adapt to changes you may not have foreseen. We’re here to explore how Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can become a major part of your winning strategy. There are many analytics tools out there, but Google Analytics 4 is one of if not the most accessible and effective tools available to all businesses.
If you have never used a tool like GA4, then you might be wondering just how powerful its data-collection capabilities can be. With the right analysis, you can gain insights into which pages are your top performers in nearly any aspect you can think of.
For example, if you want to add a new downloadable resource, where should you put it on your website? First of all, we want to think about what kind of pages are contextually relevant, and we want to consider what the goal of this download is. Once we have determined what we want to do with it, it’s time to decide how. For that, we refer to the number. Below, we see a list of our top ten pages by traffic for the past 30 days. Isn’t that amazing?
Looking deeper, we see that our blog (the thing you’re reading right now) is quite effective at bringing in traffic, with nearly all of the top 10 pages being dominated by blog posts.
This means a mid-blog CTA or end-of-scroll CTA would be excellent choices for inserting our downloadable content. If the user is on your blog, they are searching for information, so providing them with your high-quality assets here can be a powerful step in “nurturing the lead.”
CRO and your offensive play
Picture Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) as the vanguard of your strategy, propelling your business toward its peak. Analytics enables you to differentiate effective strategies from ineffective ones. It involves understanding user behavior, refining user experiences, and optimizing visual assets to reap better results. Now that we’ve briefly covered how to identify your top performers, we can look a little deeper.
CRO is where we delve into a world where data analysis meets visual design. Oftentimes, an effective CRO analysis will recommend small visual changes that may seem insignificant at first.
For example, we may want to recolor a button or give a secondary button less emphasis. Why would that improve your conversion rate optimization strategy? The reason is a simple concept called color hierarchy. The artists among us might already know what this means, but the basic idea is some colors grab attention more than others. The same is true for combinations of colors. For example, the text you are reading right now is black, which in this context doesn’t seem very special, but have a look at the image below. What do you notice first? It might be the almost gold-like coloring of the smoke stacks as they are the brightest colored and most lightly reflective part of the shot.
We mentioned how the black used in page text might feel insignificant, but just look at the contrast it has against a white background. It’s a simple concept that is easy to forget, but If you have ever tried to read yellow highlighter on a yellow sticky note, you’ll know what we mean.
You have the data, time to make the play
Now that you’re aware of both the analytics and CRO concepts, how do we combine them, and how do we get results out of them? Let’s think of this in terms of another use case. This time, we will look at a real example with which we have recently achieved success. The image below shows a mid-blog banner that has seen excellent results.
The initial idea was, “How can we increase conversions from the blog?” First, we looked into the data by searching for our top blogs in GA, just like we saw earlier. Then we used another tool, Microsoft Clarity, a powerful CRO/UX insights tool. With this combination, we were able to determine what pages to focus on as well as what part of the page to focus on.
Through MS Clarity, we were able to see how deep users would scroll on average. A best practice is to add a CTA before the 50% scroll depth mark, but this can vary depending on your business and your content, so it is always important to confirm this theory first, if possible. With that done, we decided to insert new leaderboard CTA images at approximately the 45% mark, and four weeks later, we saw excellent results.
Testing four weeks later is a common convention as it is often the first point where you can really assess if your play was a win or needs adjustment. Unfortunately, this means we need to have patience but worry not! The results are worth it!
Next steps, data-driven planning
A well-executed play, informed by careful analysis, can lead to victory. In business, this equates to using analytics to deeply understand market trends, customer preferences, and key performance metrics. Consider a web page with a high bounce rate (now engagement rate). Analytics is your tool to examine, diagnose, and strengthen these struggling pages into valuable assets.
Just like a seasoned quarterback uses historical data to make impactful decisions, marketers use analytics for adaptable and precise strategy modification. It provides a deep understanding of the competitive landscape and the ability to make decisive, data-driven decisions that drive higher achievement.
Assemble your “A team”
Inspired to transform your marketing approach? Work with us and truly redefine your marketing. Together, we can harness data-driven insights to navigate your business objectives toward new heights.
Game summary
We covered the transformative role of analytics and conversion rate optimization strategies as partners for enhancing your business efforts. We focused on finding our top traffic pages and discussed how simple visual concepts can help us make a huge difference.Emphasizing the significance of subtle design changes in improving engagement and conversion rates. Ultimately, a patient, well-analyzed approach to strategy refinement is the best way to make the most out of your business efforts. So, let’s work together and boost your conversions today! Contact us today!
