6 Simple Google Analytics Reports You Need Every Month

By DSNews on May 8, 2013

 

What type of information should you be looking at within your website analytics? 

As dealers become more and more aware of the information available within Google analytics, this question keeps coming up. So, here's a nice starting point regarding the type of reports you should include with your mix. I chose these reports simply because of their high level nature and their ability to create solid awareness of your website performance. The path to each report shown below can be seen within the left hand navigation of the pages. Click images for full size.

Goal Conversion Tracking. 

Google analytics gives you 20 goal conversion tracking opportunities. It's a very simple concept, you need to have conversions in place to monitor your performance. How can you tell if a long tail keyword is helping if you're not tracking it's activity? How are you judging the performance of a new landing page with this data? You can't make those decisions without looking at the goal conversion activity. It's a must-have report. 

Organic Search Traffic

Most of your traffic (25-50%) may come from branded search traffic - which is fine, but you always have an opportunity to pick up traffic from other long tail, non-branded search terms from online shoppers who haven't found a dealership. Buyers doing research use a lot of other search terms to find different makes, models and ultimately to locate a dealership by location. Track your organic search phrases to find opportunities to drive relevant traffic to lower level search pages and/or improve existing pages. This can also help you improve the site links displayed under your primary URL shown within the organic results by properly organizing relevant content within specific pages.  The example below shows the standard site activity. To see the goal conversion data, simply click on the goal links to the right of the site data text under the explorer tab at the top. 

Content Drilldown

What pages are your visitors looking at? And of course, what's the goal conversion from those pages? Another simple practice of determining where your visitors are going and what they're doing. How do know which pages to improve if conversion is poor? Which pages should you be marketing even more aggressively? Don't see your specials page on your top 10 list? Now you know where to focus your efforts. 

NOTE: All reports are showing higher percentages of traffic from the "Not Provided" category. This is Google's way of not showing all of the results to prevent marketers from trying to game the system. This also maintains a level of mystery to keep us guessing while we continue to improve our marketing efforts. These results include the activity from Google users who are logged in. A large percentage of those results are already contained within the rest of your results, they just aren't shared by Google.

Goal Flow

Goal flow is a nice visual tool to help your staff better understand how each channel can help contribute to the goals being tracked. You can quickly see where the traffic comes from, how it's split into the different goals and the amount of successful actions and drop-off's. Select the different goals and sources from the drop down menus at the top view each specific activity. 

Mobile Overview

This couldn't be any simpler. This report breaks down your desktop and mobile traffic. Want to dive deeper? Click on the "devices" link in the navigation to see which devices are being used to access your site. Some dealers are getting more traffic from iPhones, others from Android while others are seeing more traffic from iPads. Use that data to help determine how your site is built, what type of content is being published and how your customers are responding to the different formats. 

Organic Traffic by Location

This is a custom report that you'll need to build. It's not that difficult; follow the step-by-step instructions to set up the Organic Traffic by Location report. This report will open your eyes as to where your traffic is coming from and help identify opportunities for improvement. This can also be valuable info for your offline marketing efforts. And of course, the conversion goal data helps your decision making process here as well.

What other reports are you using to help better decisions about your website performance?

 

Get more people FROM your website-to your dealership!

Content is King = The content, in text, on your website is just as important in driving customers from your website to contacting your dealership as it is in getting people to view your website in the first place.

Here are some of the most useful contact producing elements:

-          Quality of photos – most of the people who use your website are looking for inventory – “Do you have what I want? How much is it?”.  They will judge your inventory based on the photo, especially on your used vehicle photos (all new vehicle look alike).  Additionally, most of you host your used vehicle inventory on third-party sites where the photos of your inventory will be displayed side-by-side with that of other Dealers.  Once again, you will be judged by the quality of your photos, compared to your competition.  What do your photos say about you?  That you are professional or that you aren’t paying attention?

-          Quality of descriptions – After photos, people look for valid descriptions of the vehicle.  This is your opportunity to really build value in the vehicle. What are this specific vehicle’s major selling points?  Is it a one-owner?  Does it have a clean CarFax?  Was the previous owne a non-smoker? Does it have a nav system, DVD player, leather interior, sunroof, MP3 connectivity, etc.?  List these as bullet points at the beginning of the description, not just as part of the V.I.N. explosion.

-          Specials – After inventory, specials are the second-most clicked links in your website. Specials are also free to add.  Just think how much your dealership spends advertising cars for sale using traditional methods.  Doesn’t it make sense to do the same thing in your website where the exposure is great but the cost is zero?  And yet, we continually see Dealer’s websites with no specials fo new or used; service or parts; Accessories or F&I.  Why in the world would a Dealer allow 5 minutes to go by without a full array of specials to be posted on their website?

-          Value Proposition – This is a structured explanation of the reasons why a customer should choose your dealership for their next vehicle.   A good Value Proposition is more than just your years in business or awards the dealership has won, although these may certainly be included.  A good Value Proposition will include the tangible reasons why a customer should choose to purchase from and service their vehicle with you. It’s important to note the elements of a Value Proposition do not have to be unique to your dealership and do not have to cost you money.  It’s just important that you talk about it, since most of your competition will not do so.

-          Enticements – Once again, this does not necessarily need to cost you money, although it can if you choose.  The enticement is the drop-down window in the middle of your home page, above the blurb.  You can use Toyota Care or the current incentive – or you can use a gift card, gas card, i-Pod or other enticement to get customers to fill out the form.

-          Chat – this comes in two forms – managed chat where an vendor chats with your customers to create an appointment or in-house chat where you assign dealership personnel to do the same thing.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but, when done well, Chat can produce a LOT of showroom traffic.

-          Pop-up/Pop-under coupons – Use these like the enticement – to offer additional reasons for the customers to contact you. Keep them legitimate and effective.  One Dealer we know offered $10,000.00 off MSRP, but the fine print read “only on Land Cruiser.”  The only thing they accomplished successfully was to make 600 people upset!

-          Texting – If you have a mobile website you can advertise quick codes and short numbers on your static website so customers can text you. After all, texting surpassed phone calls on mobile devices clear back in 2008!

-          Credit App – Your website includes an online application for credit.  Be certain to check your Fusion Admin Tools site regularly for the securely stored applications and contact those customers immediately.

-          Trade-in Appraisal – By having the trade-in appraisal link in your website, you keep the customer with you and you generate a highly qualified lead.  We recommend that you address the trade-in with your initial response back to a customer who is appraising their trade.

Having and effectively using these different elements of your website can greatly improve your lead volume.  But remember, you want your website to drive your customer to contact your dealership using whichever method they choose – by email, telephone or in person.

When it comes to your website initiative you have two goals:

They are:

-          Get more people TO your website

-          Get more people FROM your website

In this post, we’ll address the first one.  There are a lot of things you can do to attract more customers to your website.   These include:

-          Search Engine Optimization-based (SEO) keywords.  Between 50 and 70 percent of the traffic to your website will be through a search engine.  Therefore, the more keywords that customers use to search for your products and services that are on your website in key areas, the more traffic you will receive.  Most Dealers do a good job of listing the models Toyota offers and many do a good job with listing the 10-12 towns in their PMA.  Far fewer do a good job with listing freeways, cross streets, landmarks and regional nicknames.  Even fewer do a good job with departments, (Sales, Service, Parts, Accessories, etc.), services (Brakes transmissions, alignments, oil change, etc.) or Parts and accessories (wipers, filters, tires, batteries, nav systems, alarms, leather, step rails, wheels, etc.).  These can be listed on the blurb on the home page, the ‘about us’ page and other pages throughout the website.

-          Reputation Management.  The latest research we’ve seen says that 80% of online shoppers were strongly influenced as to which dealership’s website to choose based on what is written in online review sites.

-          Links, Certifications & Directories.  Get your business and website listed by your local Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, etc.  Request and build links to online review sites, charities that you support, colleges, suppliers, and advertisers.

-          Social Media – Use YouTube, Facebook, Blogs, Google+ and any other social media sites to build and maintain relationships with current, past and potential customers.

-          Paid Banners and SEM.  After you have accomplished all of the above then look at spending money on these other methods to drive more traffic.