Your website visitors are much more than page views. They are people that take various actions (or not) when they get to your site. It’s important to understand as much as you can about them. Due to Google’s powerful network they have a lot of information on your users. You may as well use it to get to know your real audience.
* Who Are They? – Knowing exactly who your visitors are is useful because when you first choose your audience you are usually just making a guess on the best audience so that you can create marketing materials and products and services. But, once you have your site live and your products selling, checking up to ensure that you’re still marketing to the right people helps tremendously.
* Where Did They Come From? – How your audience finds you is an important thing to know. Because if your audience is finding you more from one location over another, you need to up your activities there so you can get more of that traffic. In Google Analytics you can find this information under All Referrals.
* Where Is Your Audience Located? – You can use the Geo Location area of analytics to find out where your audience lives. Even if you’re marketing worldwide it’s good information to have, because the location of your audience does help you make some assumptions about their personalities and values.
* What Do They Do on Your Site? – You can map what each visitor does on your site so that you can see which menu items are most popular. This can help you determine what type of content you should put more of on your website. Put more of what they’re reading and viewing on your site to attract even more visitors like them.
* What Do They Want? – By analyzing where they go, how they interact and so forth, you can make some assumptions about what they want from you. If they’re reading blog posts, do more; if they watch and share videos more often, do more of that.
* Where Are Their Conversion Paths? – Knowing the steps a user takes to reach a buying decision is important, because it can help you create paths that work for your visitors based on the conversions already made. This information can help you optimize your sales funnels.
* What Information Do They Comment On? – If you have a forum, or have opened comments on your blog, or get emails from people who purchased something from you, what information do they comment on most? Is it positive, negative or indifferent? With that information, you can create more content that gets bigger responses.
Any information you can get on your visitors will help you improve not only your website, but your entire business. You can learn so much by what the current visitors do and don’t do on your website. Use the information to make everything better and more targeted.