How Google Analytics can help your Tour and Activity Business
Tourism figures are on the rise in Ireland. Initiatives such as the Wild Atlantic Way and the Ancient East mean that the numbers of tourists coming to Ireland is expected to keep rising.This all means that tour and activity providers in Ireland need to be aware of every little detail that could give them an advantage in reaching these potential new customers.One such way is to analyse available data on existing customers to get a better understanding about their online behaviour. This information is available through Google Analytics where key insights about your customers can be found.
This post will explain a number of ways that Google Analytics can be used by tour and activity companies to help them understand their customers better and therefore, improve their business. Most people are aware of Google Analytics. Anything associated with Google is instantly recognisable and carries a certain amount of credibility. However, not every business is using it. Its a completely free tool and for the benefit it provides when used correctly, it should be a no brainer for tour and activity providers to start using it.Below are 6 ways that Google Analytics can help you get valuable insights into your customers’ behaviour
1. Analyse Traffic to your Site
The information available on visitors to your website is vast on Google Analytics. Not only can you find out how many people visited your site, but also age, sex, location and much more. This is one area where online has a distinct advantage over offline. Imagine owning a sports store and being able to know which pair of trainers people spent the longest time looking at, or how long they spent in the shop. Imagine knowing how long it had been since their last visit or how many times they come into the shop before they buy something. All this information about your website is available in Google Analytics
2. Know your sources
You can also see where the visitor was immediately before they came to your site. With this you can learn how people find your site.
Maybe you have a large number of referrals from Facebook, or maybe most of your traffic is coming via search engines.
By having this information available to you, you can then assess which channels are most worthwhile for your business, thus concentrating your time and effort (and money!) on the most beneficial areas.
3. Set Goals
This is often said to be the most important part of google analytics. You have the ability to set goals to further help you analyse your customers behaviour.
Examples of goals could be time spent on site, or number of pages viewed per visit. Or if there is a specific page that you feel is important for people to see, such as your contact page or a special promotion page, you can set a goal to be a view of that page.
4. Track Conversions
The feature that goes hand in hand with setting goals, is tracking the conversions of each goal. As above you can see which off site sources and which pages on your site deliver the most goal conversions.
This will ensure you are aware of how your most valuable site visitors are behaving online.
5. Get Alerts
You can also set alerts that will notify you whenever a certain event takes place. This can be handy as it can be set up to let you know of something that might need attention on your site.
For instance, you could set an alert for when your bounce rate goes above a certain level. This could alert you to a problem on a specific page.
It is also important for you to be aware of any spikes or drops in traffic to your site as you may need to take immediate action.
By setting alerts correctly you can be sure you wont miss any important events on your website.
6. Analyse Your Ad Spend
If you spend money on google adwords, then linking it to your Analytics account is crucial.
If you don’t track the traffic that is coming to your site from your ads, you have no way of knowing how effective your AdWords campaign is. Without knowing this you could be throwing your money away.
Google Analytics helps you ensure you are spending your AdWords budget in the correct way by letting you attribute conversions to the correct source.
If there is low conversion rates from Ad traffic you will see this straight away and realise that you need to alter your ad strategy.
At Vivit we understand that tour and activity providers can be busy. Any available tools that can make your life easier are welcome. Google analytics is one such tool and should be set up and utilised on every website. Using the above features should ensure you are more aware of how your customers behave online and if the data is used correctly Google Analytics will be of great benefit to your business.