What’s New?

There are a few main differences between Universal Analytics and GA4. Whereas with UA, users were tracked via sessions and pageviews, GA4 tracks events and parameters. GA4 tracks all events that a user completes, so they can more accurately represent what users are doing on your site. UA was more focused on users being on your site and less on the events they took while there. GA4 automatically tracks certain events, and you can easily create custom events to capture anything the default events might miss.

Another main difference is the reporting. GA4 only provides you with high-level reports but allows you to create customized reports to meet your needs with a variety of dimensions and metrics. Unlike UA, this will enable you to create the reports you need rather than settling for pre-built ones that you can only customize slightly. 

The final significant difference is the way you set them up. If you have set up a Universal Analytics account, you would see a property and a view, whereas GA4 tracks a single property across apps and website data. While with UA, you had to install tracking codes separately for your site, apps, etc. GA4 allows you to install one tracking code across your various properties and gather user data across all streams. Your tracking code which used to be UA-XXXXXX-X now looks something like this: G-XXXXXXX.

Why You Should Switch Now

As we mentioned earlier, GA4 is the future of Google Analytics, and as of July 1, 2023, Google is doing away with Universal Analytics entirely. 

Similar to Universal Analytics, GA4 does not backtrack. While this is unfortunate, the sooner you install GA4, the sooner you will begin collecting user data. Since Google Analytics won’t import past data from UA properties, we recommend implementing GA4 as quickly as possible to have more data at your disposal. 

How to Upgrade to GA4

If you are using UA now and are interested in upgrading, Google has made it easy! 

1. Navigate to google.com/analytics and under Admin, go to your property. Under your property, the first option will be “GA4 Setup Assistant.”
2. Under “I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property,” click “Get Started.” (If your Universal Analytics is installed with gtag.js, you can select “Enable data collection using your existing tags.”)
3. If not, in the pop-up window, click “Create Property.”
4. Navigate to “Property Settings” and find your Property ID in the top right corner. 
5. You can install the tag directly on your site or utilize Google Tag Manager. We find it easiest to use Google Tag Manager to consolidate all your tags and triggers.
6. If you already have GTM installed on your site, you can create a GA4 Configuration Tag. If you need to install GTM on your site, navigate to https://tagmanager.google.com/, click Create Account in the top right corner, and follow the prompts on the screen. You’ll then follow the installation instructions, installing the code snippets in the header and body of your site code.
7. Now, in GTM, navigate to your workspace.
8. Click “Add a new tag” on the top left.
9. In the pop-up window, name your tag “GA4” and click “Tag Configuration.”
10. Select Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration from the menu, and under “Measurement ID,” insert your Property ID.
11. Under Triggering, select All Pages. This will track events and parameters on every page within your domain. 
12. Save your tag and click Submit in the top right corner.
13. To check that your tag is installed correctly, click Preview, insert your website’s URL, and click around your site. Your firing tags will appear for each page you visit and each interaction you have on your site.
14. Ensure that the GA4 tag is firing on your site.
15. You’re all set for the future of Google Analytics!

Conclusion

We understand change can be challenging, but GA4 is here, and Google is forcing your hand. It’s a good idea to learn as much as possible about the ins and outs of GA4 so you can outperform your competition. We recommend this in-depth explanation of GA4 for further reading.

GA4 allows you to track what users are doing on your site more accurately, makes conversion tracking much easier, and dramatically improves reporting. While it won’t give you all of this data right off the bat, implementing GA4 as early as possible will ensure that you take advantage of data sooner than your competition. 

Hopefully, this was helpful, and you’re all set up in GA4!

More questions about Ga4? Contact Beanstalk and let’s chat.

The post What is GA4? appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Data-driven digital marketing services rely on reporting to track progress. However, it can be difficult to find important information in reports, especially if you aren’t actively tracking marketing progress every day.

Any data-driven digital marketing report should answer the following questions:

• Are my digital marketing efforts working?
• How well are they working?
• What can or should be improved to increase my ROI?

Elements of a Data-Driven Digital Marketing Report

Let’s take a look at one of our digital marketing reports to understand the components of a good report. Learn what to look for and how to read digital marketing reports your top questions.

Here are the elements data-driven digital marketing reports should include:

The Summary

Before diving into the nitty-gritty metrics, a good digital marketing report will include a summary that provides a snapshot of the business and current digital marketing efforts.

Some important things to include in the summary section are

• The dates that the report covers
• A list of the main marketing channels (Paid Advertising, Organic Posting, SEO, etc.)
• A description of the current scope of the project and what was completed in the given time period
• Information on the target audience, target demographic information, location, hobbies, interests, etc.
• A space to discuss future growth opportunities, ideas for projects, or strategy changes

A good summary should clearly break down what is being done to provide a clear picture of the digital marketing efforts for the given time period. The summary sets the stage to make it easier to digest the metrics to come.

The Analytics

Nearly every data-driven digital marketing report will start with looking at analytics data to evaluate the performance of the website and marketing efforts. Our reports seek to provide information about the website’s users to try and piece together the performance of the website itself.

Google Analytics data can help answer a few main questions:

Where are users coming from and how do users find your website?

If you are investing money into marketing your website, it’s important to know what channels users are coming from. This information allows us to confirm which digital marketing efforts are working best at driving traffic to your website. The traffic channels and traffic breakdown section of our reports answer these questions.

What devices do users use?

Knowing the devices from which your website’s users visit can help you determine where to spend time optimizing in order to get the best results. For B2C companies, most of your energy should be spent optimizing your website for mobile users; for B2B companies, most of your website’s visitors will probably be on desktop.

What is their on-site behavior?

Once you’ve figured out where your website’s visitors are coming from, it’s important to take a look at their on-site behavior. The following metrics can reveal a lot about how users interact with your website:

• Bounce Rate

The bounce rate represents the number of people who leave after visiting a single page of your website, without making any sort of meaningful interaction. Ideally, this number will be as low as possible. A high bounce rate can indicate poor quality traffic that is not engaged with your content. It is a good idea to evaluate pages with higher bounce rates to see if there are any areas that can be optimized for engagement.

• Pages Per Session

Pages per session is the average number of pages a user visits on your website in a single visit. Certain types of websites, like e-commerce websites, can expect a higher average number of pages per session. The average website should shoot for around 1.8 to 4.4 pages per session.

• Sessions Per User

Sessions per user is the average number of times a user visits your website. While it is unusual for this number to be much higher than 1, a higher number of sessions per user indicates that users are engaged with your content and visit your website more than once.

• Average Session Duration

Average session duration is how long the average user spends on your website per session. Engaged users tend to spend longer amounts of time on your website. A good average session duration to shoot for is 2-3 minutes.

What pages do users visit?

It’s important to take a look at which pages users visit most often as well as those users initially use to find your website. Your top landing pages and most visited landing pages can give you a sense of what content on your site resonates with users and how users move through your site toward the desired action.

Sometimes, unexpected pages can end up being the most visited pages of your site. Be sure to optimize these pages, keep their information up to date, and make sure they guide users toward a conversion if possible. Optimize any paid ads landing pages for conversions. Learn how to optimize your landing page with our helpful guide.

Where in the world are your website’s visitors?

Especially if you offer a product or service that’s specific to a certain area, it’s important to make sure your traffic is coming from the right people. If you find that most of your website’s traffic is coming from somewhere other than your desired location, you may need to consider changing up your paid advertising targeting. You may also want to consider local SEO tactics to capture qualified leads in your area.

What conclusions can we draw from the actions users take on the website?

This is where the real analysis begins. Once you have gathered as much information as possible about your website’s users, it’s time to think about what their behavior might mean. Taking the time to draw conclusions from data-driven digital marketing reporting can help your business gain insight and take strategic actions in the future. While you may want to rely on the experts to help you draw conclusions from your data, try to pick out a few questions or insights yourself. 

Marketing Efforts

Finally, every data-driven digital marketing report should take a deep dive into the performance of all marketing efforts. Determining the performance of each marketing medium will help determine which marketing efforts are performing best, driving the most leads, and landing the most qualified conversions.

While Google Analytics alone can give us some insight as to where marketing efforts are paying off, ultimately more information is necessary to make data-driven marketing decisions.

There are several important things to analyze when determining the performance of various marketing efforts. For each digital marketing channel in your report, consider the following:

How Much is This Costing My Business?

It is important to calculate the cost as not only “how much is my ad spend” but also how much time is spent setting up and optimizing each marketing channel. Even if a channel like organic social posting is technically “free,” you will need to spend a significant amount of time creating, scheduling, promoting, and interacting with posts. 

Determine a budget and goals for each marketing channel. In the first 90-180 days a new campaign goes live, you should establish a baseline of data to expect from each marketing channel. With paid advertising channels, this baseline can tell you if you should be spending more or less, or changing targeting. With organic digital marketing channels, this baseline will give you a better idea of how long it might take to achieve the results you expect. Becoming familiar with your baseline performance is important so that you can recognize shifts in marketing performance easily and quickly.

Conversion Tracking

Any good data-driven marketing reporting strategy will include as much information about conversions as possible. While other marketing metrics may fluctuate from month to month, none is as important as the conversions your business receives. For each marketing source, you should be able to see

• How many Conversions you received each month
• How much is the average conversion cost in terms of ad spend (ie. 6 Conversions / $300 Ad Spend = $50 Per Conversion)
• What were the specific Conversions Actions Users made? Did they call you, fill out a form, download a piece of content, purchase something on your website, etc?
• If possible, what information do we have about the people who completed conversions? Even tracking names or email addresses is an important part of determining the quality of each lead you receive from each marketing channel.

Conversion Quality

The best data-driven marketing strategies understand that quantity is not the most important thing. Quality is far more important.

If you’re getting 20 phone calls a month from your Google Ads, that’s an awesome start. But don’t stop there. Take a look at who those 20 phone calls came from. Which calls led to sales? Which calls led to the most valuable sales? When you take the time to understand the value of each conversion, you can make data-driven digital marketing decisions with confidence.

The value of each marketing conversion is the metric that can help you most easily answer the following questions:

• Are my digital marketing efforts working?

• • • Do you consistently get the number of conversions you expected? 
    • Are the conversions and cost per conversion generating a positive ROI?

• How well are they working?

• • • Are the conversions you receive leading to tangible sales?
    • What is the value of your sales from digital marketing effort vs. the cost per sale?

• What can or should be improved to increase my ROI?

• • Which digital marketing channels are bringing in the most leads and most valuable sales?
  • Are you using the right data-driven digital marketing strategy for your business? 

Some of these questions may be harder to answer than others. We are always available at Beanstalk to take a deep dive into your digital marketing report and provide valuable insights. Even with the extensive data that each of our reports provides, we add additional strategic insights that are essential components of data-driven digital marketing services.

Additional Questions to Consider

How Often Should You Be Looking At Your Digital Marketing Reports?

How often you need to evaluate progress depends on your industry, methods, and goals. One month is a good sweet spot for most projects. However, for long-term SEO strategies, month-to-month reporting can be too often to provide any meaningful data, while PPC campaigns might require more frequent checks. 

What tools are available for reporting?

At Beanstalk, we are big fans of Google Data Studio, which allows us to combine metrics from tons of different data sources into one comprehensive report. For most websites, Google Analytics is a great place to start analyzing your website’s main data. Your CRM software can help you match names with the metrics and figure out the value of each marketing channel. Beyond that, there are endless tools for reporting and measuring marketing success. These should provide a sufficient basis for most companies to get started. 

Is It Time to Consider a Marketing Pivot?

Again, the answer depends on your strategy and marketing channels. When it comes to data-driven digital marketing services, you should expect to see results from paid efforts a lot sooner than organic efforts. While organic efforts may only begin to generate results after several weeks or months, with paid efforts, you should see results more quickly. But before you go changing up your strategy completely, look for obvious areas for improvement. Sometimes even a simple change can be a game-changer, so make sure you’ve exhausted all options before throwing in the towel.

How Do I Make Data-Driven Decisions from My Reports?

The best way to make data-driven digital marketing decisions is to view your report as both a summary of what has been done and a jumping-off point for future marketing efforts. Making data-driven decisions is a systematic process. Professional digital marketers use reports to make observations. From those observations, we make a hypothesis, which we test with an actionable change. From there, results follow, which we analyze and report on, and the process begins again.

Ever felt overwhelmed by your digital marketing reporting or struggled to understand what the metrics really imply? We get it. It’s why we focus on data-driven digital marketing services that deliver tangible results. If you have any questions about your digital marketing reports, talk to us! We’ll help you find a solution that allows you to get the actionable insights you need without getting overwhelmed.

The post Digital Marketing Reports: How to Read Reports Like a Professional appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Making money isn’t cheap. Any small business owner knows that staying afloat requires some marketing agency investments. You’re probably already handling expenses like office rent, marketing materials, prototypes, or software licenses.

Spending money on marketing agency investments can help your business grow and prevent disaster down the line. Companies sometimes overlook these six marketing agency investments. Still, they’re some of the most valuable expenses your organization can add to its budget:

1. Marketing Platforms and Software

The sum of marketing information your company collects — from web analytics to survey data — can be hard to manage manually. A digital marketing platform will help you organize and analyze all the customer data you gather. 

With the insights these platforms can uncover, you can seriously improve your marketing campaigns. Analysis and marketing automation can help you personalize promotional materials and improve ad targeting.

They can also help you nurture leads and stay on top of customers who are likely to convert.

2. Remote Collaboration Tech

Your employees aren’t always going to be in the office. They may be working from home or out of state, meeting with clients. While you can communicate with methods like text messages and phone calls, they may not do the job. Communication records won’t be readily available. It can also be hard to coordinate more than a couple of employees with these methods. This issue is especially true if a large portion of your team isn’t in the office.

You may also struggle to get these workers the files and tools they need to stay productive. 

Remote collaboration tech can be a major boon for businesses with employees on the go. Messaging platforms allow team members to organize their communications in one, easy-to-access location. As they collaborate, they’ll also naturally generate chat logs. You and your team can pass these on to supervisors or clients who need a quick update.

With cloud-based file sharing, you and your employees can access files and collaborate no matter where you are — so long as there’s Wi-Fi. 

3. Computer Hardware

Every year, computer hardware gets a little more powerful. Most digital tools and platforms take advantage of this. Every so often, they’ll upgrade their performance and become a bit more demanding. 

If you want to take full advantage of the latest software, you’ll need to upgrade your computer hardware.

There are also some other benefits of upgrading. New solid-state drives (SSDs) are more reliable than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) and are typically quicker to load files. Upgrading your drive can reduce the risk of losing locally stored data to hard drive failure. New SSDs may also help your computers boot a little faster in the morning.

If you’ve ever wanted to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning, you may need a significant upgrade to processing power. 

Because computer hardware is so interdependent, one upgrade may lead to another. For example, you might need to upgrade your power supply to handle a more powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) or central processing unit (CPU). Fortunately, just about any upgrade to your hardware will provide you with more options.

4. Cloud Computing Resources

Unsurprisingly, cloud computing offers some real benefits for tech-driven companies. Cloud storage can be great for distributed teams that need to share files.

Another major advantage is scalability. With the cloud, you’ll have instant access to any resources you need. If you want to expand storage or run more software, you can allot extra storage or processing power with the click of a button. 

This can also help you cut back on costs. With cloud computing, you’ll only pay for the resources you use.

5. Legal and Accounting Services

Legal services will help you manage contracts, licenses, and lawsuits. Often, they’ll help you handle costs you may not have seen coming. For example, some states require licenses or permits if you want to put up signs. Running your business plan by your legal counsel will help you catch potential licensing or permit costs like these. With better information, your business can be ready to handle these expenses.

While you may be tempted to balance the books on your own, accountants are invaluable for small businesses. They’ll help you identify areas where you can decrease operating costs and make more money. Your accountant will also be extremely valuable during tax season. During this time, they’ll pick out applicable deductions and manage paperwork.

Unless you enjoy filing your business’s taxes, an accountant is an excellent investment. They can reclaim a lot of your time, and probably some of your money, too.

6. Insurance

About 75% of businesses in the U.S. are under-insured by 40%. They don’t necessarily have the insurance they need to cover damages in the event of a human or natural disaster.

Many small and medium businesses often skip out on some insurance policies. It can feel hard to justify a recurring expense with no guarantee of ROI, but the costs for skimping on coverage can be steep. Cyber attacks are becoming more common every year. If you live in a region prone to natural disasters — like anywhere near the coast — you may be at serious risk.

Work with your accounting and legal team to identify the types of insurance you need most. You may find the right plan is a lot cheaper than expected. You might also be able to take advantage of emerging forms of insurance. If you store a lot of customer data, for example, data breach or cybersecurity insurance could be helpful.

Marketing Agency Investments Can Save Money Later

These investments will cost you, but they can save your business some serious trouble. Insurance and legal advice won’t pay off right away, but they can prevent some significant expenses.

You don’t need to make all these investments at the same time. You can slowly fold these expenses into your business’s budget. If you want to adopt a lot of new tech, phase it in. This will ensure that your team can adjust to new workflows. Some investments are also more pressing — you may want to find insurance and accounting, for example, sooner than others. Always gauge your investments in order of priority.

More questions regarding marketing agency investments? Reach out to the experts at Beanstalk. 

Lexie is a web designer and digital nomad. She loves hanging out at flea markets and taking her goldendoodle on hikes. Follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner and check out her design blog, Design Roast.

The post 6 Essential Marketing Agency Investments appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

All companies benefit from keeping the customers they have, but client retention in the digital marketing realm is particularly challenging. Unless you differentiate yourself from the hundreds of other digital marketing firms in your state, people have no reason to remain loyal to you. They’ll go where the costs are lowest and follow the carrot to the next new offer.

Mixpanels’ Product Benchmarks Report took a look at 1.2 billion users’ data and came up with some facts about customer retention. A look at 30-day retention rates across different industries, found a mere 4% of people stick with media-based companies. However, that figure also includes companies only offering information, so the retention rates of digital marketers may be much higher. Still, any loss of a customer to a competitor stings. 

It’s best to do everything in your power to keep the clients you have. Here are eight ways to improve your digital marketing company’s client retention rate. 

1. Create Landing Pages for Current Clients

There are many ways to improve landing page conversion rates, but targeting individual buyer personas is vital. The person who ordered from you last month doesn’t want to go through the entire onboarding process again just to get to a re-order page. Create pages aimed at keeping the customers you have. Simplify the process for those already subscribed to your mailing list. Let users save information for future visits.

2. Streamline Billing

Never frustrate your customers by sending them a bill they’ve already paid or forgetting to send an invoice one month and then hitting them with a hefty one the next. Utilize enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to ensure you meet customers’ needs on every level, including financial and need-based. 

3. Understand Their Business Goals

It’s easy to get caught up in the patterns of promoting clients. Much of the work is similar. Plan a campaign, create assets, share assets, repeat. However, in the hustle and bustle of daily promotions, it’s easy to lose sight of the unique goals each business owner has. Spend time every few months talking to your clients. Pick up the telephone or reach out via email and find out what their current goals are. 

4. Spend Your Time on the Right Clients

You have a limited number of hours in the day. Each client you take on eats into those hours. Some clients are high-risk from the beginning. Perhaps they come out of the gate demanding unachievable results. Maybe they are in a high-risk industry likely to fail. Assess each client and make sure they are a good fit for your agency. Pass on the ones who seem like they jump from agency to agency. You should also cull your list every year. If you have clients taking up the majority of your time and impacting your focus on others, it might be time to cut them loose. 

5. Ask for Feedback

You won’t know a client is unhappy unless you ask them. You never want your first clue of dissatisfaction to be losing a client. After each campaign, ask your clients for feedback on how they thought it went. Keep the lines of communication open and strive to improve with each new task. No one is perfect 100% of the time, but by talking to your customers, you improve the chances of meeting their needs and the chances of client retention.

6. Reconsider Price Increases

There are times when a price increase isn’t a great idea. It will almost always make you lose clients, which might be fine if you have more clients than you can handle. However, during difficult financial times, you might lose more work than you’d like. In recent months, many businesses experienced economic setbacks, disruptions in supply chain management, and forced store closures for weeks at a time. Before raising the costs for your customers, think about whether they can weather such a storm. Marketing is often the first budget cut for smaller organizations. 

7. Show You Care

One of the main reasons clients leave a digital marketing agency is because they feel overlooked. Every digital marketer has big-name clients with huge budgets and small mom and pop startups. Your goal should be to make the mom and pop shop feel as crucial as the multi-national corporation. Track campaign results and let clients know immediately when you see big successes or even failures. If things aren’t going well, reach out and suggest some changes mid-campaign to turn things around. 

When you show you care enough to track results in the middle of a campaign, your clients know you’re doing the best work you can for them. The mom and pop shop may turn into the next huge client in the future, so practice attention to detail now. 

8. Encourage Loyalty

What factor makes a customer loyal to your brand over all the others out there? Some ways of encouraging loyalty include creating open communication lines and offering a great customer experience (CX). You should also help clients to refer you to other people they know and reward them for doing so. Most people think through carefully what they recommend to their friends. They’ll have to consider why they love the work you do. 

Once they’ve recommended you, they’re less likely to jump ship over something minor. It is a subtle psychological push to get them on your side and keep them there. No one wants to admit to their friends they recommended you, but now they are going with another company.

Differentiate Your Digital Marketing Agency

As you implement different tactics for client retention, consider what makes you different than your competitors. You should offer equal service but then take it a step beyond. Digital marketing repeats similar services, but you can stand out by creating propriety software tracking your customer’s results or through your level of excellence and results. 

Lexie is a digital nomad and web designer. You can normally find her at the local flea markets or hiking with her goldendoodle. Check out her design blog, Design Roast, and connect with her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

The post How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Company’s Client Retention appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Google Analytics can tell you a lot about your website. So much, in fact, that it can sometimes be overwhelming to log in. You may be familiar with key metrics like users, sessions, and pageviews. But there are many more tools available to help you analyze how people interact with the content on your website. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help businesses qualify their website’s traffic and determine how well their marketing efforts are working.

Here are our top five favorite Google Analytics tools and how they can help your business:

1. Segment Your Traffic By Channel
   Whether someone finds you on Google or clicks a link on Facebook to get to your site, every new user comes from somewhere. Segmenting your traffic can help you make better decisions about how well each of your marketing efforts is working. It can help reveal discrepancies among channels. For example, maybe your Paid traffic has a much higher bounce rate than your Organic Search traffic. Viewing Analytics data in segments helps you more easily identify issues and determine which of your marketing efforts are working best.
2. Create a Custom Dashboard
   Not every metric on Google Analytics is relevant to every site. A custom dashboard allows you to display only the ones that are important to you. As opposed to fiddling around finding useful insights about your website from the main Google Analytics page, a custom dashboard allows you to display only what you want in the way that makes sense to you. Then, all of your most important metrics are stored in one convenient location to access each time you log in.
3. Add and Track Your Goals
   Every website has a goal. Whether you want people to follow your blog, write a review, buy a product, or submit a lead form, there’s a specific action you want people to take when they visit your site. Tracking these actions as goals in analytics is the perfect way to analyze users who have converted. You can also set values for each goal to determine your ROI. Goals are the perfect way to track the progress of your marketing efforts and the number of leads you receive.
4. Analyze Users’ Behavior Flow
   The Behavior Flow Chart is a visualization of your top landing pages that reveals what people do when they come to your website. This chart can help you identify navigation issues and uncovers the natural paths that most people take when visiting your site. It can let you know if there are pages people always click first or never click, if people click directly from product pages to the checkout page, or if the paths you want users to follow are the ones users are following. All of this information can help inform how effective your website is and identify navigation issues.
5. Take Advantage of Ecommerce Overview
   If you have an e-commerce website, then this tool is one of the most powerful at your disposal. This tool gives detailed information about your online store. It can tell you what products you sell most, the value of those products, your conversion rate, and your revenue. Then, this section can give you an exact ROI based on your paid advertising spend. It shows you the functionality of each step of your online store from viewing a product page to eventual purchase.

Google Analytics tools offer many hidden gems that provide super valuable information when analyzing the effectiveness of your website, sales, and marketing efforts. Make sure you are taking advantage of all the tools Analytics offers – it’s completely free! If you have any questions about using Google Analytics to its full potential, contact us.

The post 5 Google Analytics Tools You Might Not Know About  appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

How many tracking codes do you have on your site? It can easily start feeling overwhelming when you are tracking all your various efforts – Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Pixels, Google Search Console, Google My Business, heatmap tracking, remarketing tags. Before you know it, you have a long list of sites & software, each requiring their own javascript tracking tag, each of which needs to be put on your site. These are all important and can help you understand how to improve your site, marketing, & user experience, but it’s a simple truth that they can easily get overwhelming. Google Tag Manager can help you keep track of all the conversion on your site from a single dashboard.

Previously, most people would have to submit a support ticket to their web developer each time they needed a tracking code added, removed, or changed. While it definitely is smart to have a developer do anything requiring altering code on your website, that time can really add up – plus, you have to wait for them to process the request and ensure that the code is working.

Benefits of Google Tag Manager

With Google Tag Manager, you have a big advantage when it comes to adding, removing, and changing tracking codes – code only needs to be implemented on your site one time. Once Google Tag Manager’s base code is installed on your site, you can change others by adding them to “Tags” within Tag Manager’s easy-to-use, codeless interface. Within Tag Manager, you can create new Tags, Triggers, & Variables, tailored to your business & its goals, so that you can be sure that you’re tracking what matters most to you. What’s more, Google offers a free certification course, so you can be sure that you’re using the system in the best, most effective way.

One of the most useful features in Google Tag Manager is the preview function. This allows you to preview how the Tags will function on your site before you go live with them. You can then ensure that everything is working exactly how you’d like it to before going live with your container. This takes nearly all of the “wait and see” out of adding tracking codes. You can watch your Analytics Tag & Facebook Pixel fire on your site in real-time, as well as track successful form submissions, clicks to email, views of key pages, and much more. Implement less code and gain more detailed insights into what’s working and what’s not. 

Stop Dealing With Tricky Tracking Codes

Google Tag Manager cleans up your site’s code considerably. For each tracking code, a snippet of javascript is added to your site – these snippets can stack up quickly. Not only does Google Tag Manager leave you with a cleaner, easier to examine & troubleshoot dashboard, but it also increases your site’s speed by reducing the number of requests that your site is sending out every time it loads. Better site speed means better SEO, better user experience, and a more effective website for your company. 

Do you want to learn more about Tag Manager and how it could help you improve your site’s organization & efficiency? Reach out today to talk to an expert about turning your expertise into online success.

The post Google Tag Manager: Keep Your Website Organized & Quick appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Google Analytics goals can be used to measure how often users perform a specific behavior.

A goal refers to a desired activity that users complete on your website or app. Various actions can count as a conversion, such as a purchase, completing a contact information form, completing a newsletter form, etc.

Goals can be broken down into four types: A specific web page or app screen visit, a determined session length on the website or app, number of pages loaded in that session, or an event or action such as an ad click or video play.

Destination Goals

Destination goals keep track of specific URLs. They are counted each time a user visits a set URL. Examples of these could be high traffic pages such as the homepage, popular blogs, or login pages. You can define whether you want to make an exact match goal that only tracks specific URLs, or you can track URLs that begin with particular phrases.

Goal Funnels

A goal funnel is a series of pages that lead to the user reaching the desired URL. If you define a funnel, you can monitor how many users move through each level of your funnel to see if there is a specific step where users are leaving your path to converting. You are then able to alter that step. If there is no funnel to get to the desired destination URL, you can view the user’s paths in the Visitors Flow report.

Duration Goals

This allows you to track users that stay on your site for a desired length of time. You can also use this the opposite way and track user visits that fall below that specific amount of time. You are able to differentiate between “greater than” or “less than” parameters and can use timestamps of hours, minutes, or seconds. 

Page Visit Goals

Page goals are similar to duration goals, except rather than monitoring how long a user has spent on your site, they allow you to track how many pages they visit. Again, you can select either “greater than,” “less than,” or “equal to.”

Event Goals

This is best done through Google Tag Manager, as it allows you to create events on your website without having to edit any of the backend code. You can track almost anything you can imagine with events, including button clicks, widget usage, downloads, external link clicks. You can track any element of your site that users interact with. 

Best Practices

Once you have defined your Google Analytics goals, determine values for those actions. You can do so by determining how often users who perform the desired action become a customer. When defining goals, consider actions that generate revenue either directly or indirectly. These can be newsletter signups, form fills, account creation – anything that will help your company produce revenue. Defining a revenue-producing goal makes it easier to assign a dollar amount to every goal so that you can determine your goal value.

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Whether you’re using Google Ads to drive traffic to a specific landing page or creating beautiful Facebook and Instagram Ads for brand awareness, you should begin each new marketing effort with a goal in mind. These goals could have been to boost leads, sales, or brand visibility. Regardless of what they are, it is imperative to track your progress so that you can fully understand what’s working and what’s not.

Defining a Conversion

The first step to creating effective conversion tracking is to define what a conversion is for each of your campaigns. In a lead-generation campaign, for example, a phone call or form fill could be a conversion. In a brand awareness campaign, it could be a view of a page that details a new product or service. A conversion can be defined as any action a user can take on your website that you identify as valuable, and therefore want to track.

It’s a great idea to use your conversion tracking in tandem with your Google Analytics Goals. This allows you to track your website’s success across all of the various channels that users are visiting your site from. This is especially useful if you are utilizing multiple marketing channels, as it lets you view everything from one dashboard, making your data a lot less overwhelming and a lot easier to digest.

The good news is that conversions, while they may seem overwhelming, can give you incredibly valuable data, which you can then use to make smart decisions that lead to success and increased ROI. Conversion tracking setup can be tricky, but luckily, there are abundant resources, both from ad platform documentation and from 3rd party users, that detail how this process can be implemented. Google Tag Manager also makes tracking conversions within Google Analytics & Google Ads much easier than it would be without.

The Value of a Conversion

A fundamental question you should ask yourself when defining your conversions is how much a particular conversion is worth. A good example is the value of a lead. If you can calculate how many leads turn into customers and how much a customer is worth to your company, you can calculate how much each lead is worth.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that for every 10 leads you get, you close three of them, and the average value of a customer is $1000. If this were the case, each lead would be worth $300 for your company. This can help you make your goals – if one lead is worth $300, and you have a sales goal of $10,000 that month, that would mean that you would need 34 leads in order to hit your goals. This can help you plan ahead, predict your revenue, and adjust your strategy sooner rather than later. The best part? This data only gets more accurate as you collect it over time and gain a larger sample size.

A well set up system that gathers useful data is the key to continuous improvement & growth in any marketing campaign.

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Customer Relation Management, also known as CRM software solutions, have become essential to enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses and organizations across industries. Some of these businesses even hire CRM developers to develop custom-fitted CRM software programs for their business and product management. Using CRM tools has been a factor in improving conversion rate, because it enhances customer engagement for businesses. But why is this? What makes CRM software programs attractive to businesses?

The Diversity Among CRM Software Solutions

CRMs are not equal or identical. Like any program or technology, CRMs function in a certain way and provide certain sets of tools. There is a CRM for any business or individual processes and tasks that you may have. It is a matter of understanding your needs and finding the CRM that best addresses them.

Types of CRM Software Solutions, by Function

Operational CRM

Operational CRMs provide businesses the tools they need to manage and streamline operational processes such as sales, marketing, and customer service. Automation tools are a large part of streamlining and enhancing these business processes.

• Tools such as Contact Management, Lead Management, and Sales forecasting tools enhance the organization and processing of information to efficiently and effectively meet customer needs and improve sales outputs.
• Marketing automation tools enable businesses to enhance their approach and methods in marketing their products to target consumers, such as Campaign management tools that enable businesses to analyze the best platforms and channels to effectively market their products.
• Customer service automation processes and tools enable businesses to better communicate and engage with their consumers through services such as issues management, customer call management, or service label management.

Analytical CRM

Data analyses are the backbone of CRM software solutions. Analytical CRMs provide the platform and tools for businesses to analyze and better understand their products, services, and current status. This information is then used to improve decision making with regards to the different aspects of the business and improve the services, products, and engagement with customers.

• Systematic collection and processing of data from varied sources and platforms
• Provides analyzed information to businesses and higher-level management for better decision making and improved business models.
• Help businesses standardize effectiveness measures by setting and monitoring key performance indicators.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRMs are software tools that enable teams and departments within a company or an organization to collaborate and share data and information. These programs provide tools and a platform for more streamlined and improved sharing and collaborative work and communication. Teams and departments can share feedback, reports, and updates through a single channel or platform. This enhances communication and reduces the cost and resources needed because collaborative CRMs link together the internal organizational structure of businesses.

CRM development is a large consideration when choosing the CRM software solution best fit for your business needs.

• Outsourced CRM software programs are those that are developed by employing outsourcing development services – like SalesForce, SugarCRM, NetsuiteCRM, and Zoho. This is ideal when businesses do not have in-house developers capable of developing such a tool.
• Off-the-shelf programs are those that are available with pre-existing software packages that businesses would only need to integrate into their systems. This is the most expedited way of acquiring CRM tools, as well as the cheapest, but may not function precisely according to the businesses.
• Bespoke CRM software solutions are customized to fit your business needs. Consultant and expert software engineers analyze the business needs, then design and develop the software that fits such needs. This process can be time-consuming and expensive to undertake but will provide custom and integrated software solutions.
• Managed software programs lie in between bespoke programs and outsourced CRM software solutions. These custom software solutions are rented out as bespoke packages.

Why You Should Use CRM Software Programs

It is an organization tool

CRM software programs streamline the collection and processing of data for the business. Data and information is essential in growing a business. Ensuring that these are collected, stored, and analyzed help improve the decision making processes for the growth of the business. CRM offers numerous tools, both pre-existing and configurable, that will help streamline and make organization data and information for efficient and effective.

It is a reporting tool

Using data collection and processing tools and libraries, businesses can use CRM software solutions to develop progress and forecasting reports. Therefore, this makes it easier for high-level management and the various departments to understand and execute improved business models. These tools aid meetings, collaborations, and communication. CRM reporting tools enhance customer and potential partner engagement.

It improves communication and collaboration

Having a centralized system of communication enables teams to collaborate more efficiently because it improves their productivity. Meetings better communicated and attended, while reports and are more frequent and streamlined. Also, CRM enhances customer engagement. With feedback mechanism tools, helper bots, and product information dissemination, businesses can reach their customers, improve customer-business dynamics CRM helps better and gain their feedback on their products.

It provides business analytics tools

Similar to reports and regular customer engagement, businesses gain a better understanding of the performance of their products in the market through market analysis reports and studies. CRM software programs provide readily available and configurable business analytics tools. Businesses can use these to conduct market and product analysis more efficiently and cost-effectively. This makes the process easier since the data collection and processing are already in-house and through the same tools used for the analysis.

Ensures information accountability

CRM software programs and CRM software services have the tools and potential to install measures for accountability. All data and information collected and processed are logged and tagged with the necessary metadata to ensure transparency and accountability for the business or organization.

There is something for everyone

As outlined, there is a diverse selection of CRM software programs and solutions for businesses and individuals. This is important because they can be custom-built by CRM developers to fit your needs or be readily configurable for immediate use. There are numerous CRM software solutions you can employ. It is just a matter of knowing your needs and the limit to which you can spend on acquiring one.

The post How CRM Software Solutions Can Improve Business Performance appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.

Every owner of an eCommerce business wants the same thing – to see his website working smoothly and bringing high sales. But unfortunately, not every site works effectively and generates enough conversions. Only business owners who understand the importance of conversion rate optimization get the results they want.

If you are reading this article, you may need help crafting a new strategy that will allow you to boost conversions. And we are happy to provide you with tips that will help you to get your eCommerce business back on track.

Take advantage of email marketing

Do you want to achieve the highest conversion rate optimization results? Think strategically. Find a way to improve not only your website but your entire marketing strategy. For instance, if you struggle to reduce shopping cart abandonment, use email marketing. 

Apply the following tips to create an effective abandoned cart email:

• Personalize your email. Use the recipient’s name in the subject line, or use information related to the recipient’s recent browsing history in the body of the email.
• Offer an extra discount or a small gift.
• Use the fear of missing out (FOMO). For instance, add a phrase “your cart is about to expire” or “complete this booking now, otherwise prices may increase” to urge the recipient to complete the action right here and right now.
• Use a prominent Call to Action (e.g., “complete booking”, “return to your cart”, “complete checkout”).
• Add visuals (e.g., image, animated GIF, short video).

If you do everything right, you will increase the recovery rate of up to 36%. 

Create high-quality content

It’s common that people focus more on how their websites look like rather than on what information they provide. And that’s a problem. 

Even if your website has a fantastic design that appeals to the target audience, high-quality content is a must. You should write interesting and informative blog posts to engage your website visitors. And you should create unique product descriptions to convince customers to click the button. 

Seriously. If you want to boost the conversions, you can’t just copy text from another website. You should develop a strong content marketing strategy and create every piece of content from scratch. Here are a few tips for you:

• Use Google’s keyword planner or Ubersuggest to find high volume, low competition keywords.
• Run an A/B test for your product page. Check what type of product descriptions work the best (e.g., short or long, written in informative or persuasive style)
• Write blog posts that are longer than 1,000 words. Yep, according to statistics, shorter articles are just a waste of time and money.
• If copywriting is not your cup of tea, get professional assistance. Hire a freelance content creator at Upwork or Fiverr, or use writing services like WoWGrade or SupremeDissertations.

Build a chatbot

AI-powered chatbots are still a new thing. And not that many brands use bots at their sites. 

However, statistics show that chatbots work effectively when it comes to conversion rate optimization. Firstly, bots help to make sales steps shorter, and that decreases that cart abandonment rate. Secondly, chatbots allow brands to collect more customer data and use it to upsell or and cross-promote products.

If you want to create a great chatbot for your website, take into account the following:

• Your chatbot should have a name and specific personality traits.
• A chatbot persona must fit your brand.
• Your bot should be able to answer all the frequently asked questions.
• You should use a friendly, “human-like greeting” greeting to engage customers in conversation

Use social proof

Today, customers tend to make more informed decisions about what products to buy.  According to statistics, 53% of shoppers always research products online and read product reviews before making a purchase. So it’s important to use social proof to convince customers that they make the best possible choice.

“Your website visitors do not trust salesy product descriptions. But they do trust product reviews written by real customers. So if you want to boost sales, do your best to increase social media proof,” says Andrew Blackstone, a head of marketing at PickTheWriter.

If you don’t know how to get more product reviews and how to use them on your website, here are a few tips for you.

• Use email marketing to invite customers to leave a review at your site. Offer a small reward, for instance, 15% off on the second purchase to maximize your efforts.
• Run a giveaway on social media. Offer your customers to share a product review on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube in exchange for a chance to get a prize.
• Use a social wall. Display user-generated content from different social media platforms on your website.
• Encourage customers to share their “before and after” products, if applicable to your business.

Use more visuals

To succeed in the eCommerce business, you should understand one important thing: people like visual content more than written content. Roughly 80% of users only skim web pages. They pay more attention to photos and videos rather than textual content. So if your site contains only a few images, don’t be surprised that you find it challenging to boost the conversion rate.

Statistics say that the use of visual elements increases the desire to read content by 80%. Thus, if you add YouTube videos, infographics, graphs, charts, maps, or animated GIFs to your site, you will draw the attention to your products and increase the conversion rate. 

There are dozens of free tools and services that allow creating high-quality visual content online. So you can produce all the content you need without the outside help.

Key Takeaways

Try out these strategies for advanced conversion rate optimization, and you will not be disappointed. You will maximize your marketing efforts and take your business to the next level. 

Use this article as a guide, and you will skyrocket your sales!

The post 5 Meaningful Strategies for Advanced Conversion Rate Optimization appeared first on Beanstalk Web Solutions.