What KPIs do you use to measure the success of your website? Is it general traffic? Or the number of qualified leads? The metrics you analyze and track should align with your company goals and how you define your business's success.
Here I will focus on utilizing Google Analytics 4 if your company goal is to increase the number of qualified leads coming from your website. If you are new to Google Analytics 4, please read our blog, Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics: What’s The Big Deal?, to better understand the differences between the two data platforms.
Understanding Lead Generation
A lead is someone who shows interest in your product or services and will likely convert to a paying customer. An example of this is someone who signs up for your email list—they are most likely interested in what you have to offer and want to learn more. You can gather leads through a variety of methods, such as a contact form, a booking link, or by subscribing to an email newsletter, to name a few.
How To Generate More Leads On Your Website
Monitor Your Website Traffic And Events
Traffic isn’t everything. It is important to note how many people are visiting your site and what actions they take once they get there. With Google Analytics 4 being event-based, you can measure how many visitors scroll to the bottom of your page, start a video, complete a video, their video progress (Did they watch 10%, 25%, 50%, and 75% duration time of your video before stopping?), and more if you utilize the enhanced and custom events. You can find the report in Google Analytics 4 under Reports -> Engagement -> Events.
Measure Form Views
Are you missing out on leads coming from forms? Measuring the views your forms get will help you determine if you are. Here's an example: when a form is on its own page, you can track how many people visit that URL, which helps you determine if there is something on your page that is deterring potential leads from submitting a completed form. This metric can be compared to the form interactions mentioned below.
Measure Form Interactions
Using Google Analytics 4 enhanced measurements, you can track when someone starts to fill out a form and when they complete a form. You can find the report in Google Analytics 4 under Reports -> Engagement -> Events. However, form-submitted measurements can be tricky if your form doesn’t send them to a new URL. Use this Google support article to better understand virtual page views. It is helpful to look at both of these enhanced metrics along with the form views metric to have a better understanding of where you may be potentially losing leads.
Locate Your Low-Engagement Pages
Google Analytics 4 now has an engagement rate metric, which Google defines as the number of engaged sessions divided by the total number of sessions over a specified time period. An engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, activated a conversion event, or has multiple page views. Pages with low engagement rates show that your audience doesn’t find the content relevant to their search. Update and optimize these pages with information tailored to your audience based on your search engine optimization strategy. You can find the report in Google Analytics 4 under Reports -> Engagement -> Pages and Screens. Engagement rate isn’t automatically added as a metric to this report so you’ll want to customize the report and save it with this metric for future use!
Review User Device Preferences
It seem like we are always on our phones looking for information (I know I am), but that may not be the case for every industry. Understanding how many users visit your site via mobile devices, tablets, and desktops can help you further optimize your site for those users. You can find the report in Google Analytics 4 under Reports -> Tech -> Tech Overview OR Tech Details for more information.
Analyze The Customer Journey
The explorations tab in Google Analytics 4 has many templates you can use to visually analyze the data. For the purposes of this blog, I suggest exploring the Path Exploration and the Funnel Exploration to better understand the journey your customers are taking. You can find these reports in Google Analytics 4 under Explore -> Template Gallery.
Understanding Your Audience Enhances Lead Generation Efforts
By understanding what your audience is searching for and how they are utilizing your site, you can optimize and improve your site to provide a better and more helpful experience. In fact, by analyzing this data, you can update your buyer personas as they can evolve and change your business services change. Traffic isn’t always the best indicator of a successful site. You can have everyone in the world looking at your site but if they have no interest in buying your products or services, they are nothing more than a vanity metric. If all you see is traffic but no leads, it is time for a change!
Written by Alicia Quilantan
Alicia is the Search Engine Optimization specialist at Tribute Media. When she is not completing a new certification or reading blogs about SEO and PPC. She is spending time with her dog, traveling the US, and studying French.
