Understanding your website audience has not been the same since the pandemic and resulting privacy laws. In 2022, analyzing an audience would mean logging into Google analytics and guessing what the numbers meant. This year, data tracking laws and privacy restrictions have changed the way analytics are done, how consumers find websites, and how they interact with them. If you still haven’t adjusted your audience analysis to include these factors, now would be the time.
Why “Right Audience” Still Matters
Bringing traffic to your website and attracting the right traffic are two completely different challenges. It’s better for a small business to get 500 relevant customers than to compete with an enterprise that attracts 5,000 useless visitors. The marketing funnel only converts people who are interested and engaged with your offer. This right audience consists of people who are already interested in what you are offering and at the right stage of the funnel.
If your enquiry rate has dropped, and your bounce rate has crept up, it shows that visitors are quickly abandoning the page and without exploring further. This serves as a warning that your content, targeting, and messaging might have drifted away from the people that you intended to target.
The Big Shift: Google Analytics 4
Universal analytics was switched off in July 2023 and If you were using that in 2022, you undoubtedly have to use Google analytics 4 (GA4), which is the now standard, that works differently from its predecessor. Instead of tracking traditional pageviews and sessions, Google analytics 4 is event and journey based.
This way, you get to understand better how your audience behaves, how they flow through the site, and what events they trigger that make them leave.
GA4’s exploration reports allow you to create audience segments and analyze them. If you haven’t tried this yet, you should.
GA4 has to be set up correctly to be useful. Everything that it captures by default won’t be useful. For example, make sure that form submissions, clicks on phone numbers, and downloads of files are being tracked as conversion activities.
Microsoft Clarity: Free Behavioural Insights
Microsoft Clarity is a noteworthy addition to analytics tools. It is free and provides analytics by recording actual user sessions and heat maps to show what users click on, what sections they scroll through, and what sections they lose interest in on a webpage.
For small business websites, this type of behavioral data is invaluable. You may be surprised to see users click an image they think is a link or scroll right by your most important call to action. Clarity sessions show signs of user frustration, or in other words, rage clicks, and quick exits.
Checking Search Console for Audience Intent
Google Search Console reveals what search queries lead people to your site. Seeing what search queries are driving traffic to your site gives you insight into whether your target audience is relevant. If the queries are only loosely related to your business, then it is time to refine your content.
Examine the pages report in conjunction with the queries report.
Engagements related to irrelevant terms or lack of visibility of important service pages for important searches are areas to consider taking action on.
Audience Segments and Demographic Data
Demographic data in GA4 includes users’ age, gender, location, and interests. This data comes from Google signals which is not a perfect method as it relies on users being signed into Google. However, despite its flaws, Google can help verify or dispute your thinking of who is visiting your site.
When your target customer is a local business owner aged 40 to 60, but your website traffic is predominantly younger than that, it shows how your website is being found and how it is being interpreted.
Putting It Together
Audience analysis should never be seen as a one-off exercise. Monthly checking of GA4 reports, Clarity recordings and Search Console queries will help you have a continuous view of how audience is behaving.
When your data shows that your website is attracting the wrong audience, the best solution is usually a combination of clearer messaging, content adjustments, and refined targeting to any paid campaigns you may have running. Diggit will help you create a plan and interpret the numbers.