Start by heading over to “Behavior” and then “Pages.” Here, you can click on each page and see what conversion events happened on that page. How to see which pages are driving phone calls The average landing page conversion rate is 2.95% That’s pretty depressing if you ask me. You put in all of this work to drive traffic back to your site. You’re not even sure if the customer found you via PPC ads, organic search, or direct traffic. Two SEO leads versus 11 social media leads doesn’t sound great at first. You can start to address this problem by adding a value to each conversion. Here’s what your Goal Completion numbers might look like in Google Analytics: It shows that organic search, PPC, and direct traffic are responsible for most of your conversions. In reality, however, each channel played an important role in the entire purchase process. For example, let’s say someone converts after using direct, social, PPC, and organic Search. You don’t have to ask every person who calls your business, “How’d you hear about us?” Instead, you can set up call tracking and get the data directly from Google Analytics.
Almost every single marketer uses Google Analytics.
That includes brand new startups and million-dollar companies alike.
One good reason is the price. (It’s free.)
However, the other is that it gives you a treasure trove of data to customize and manipulate. You can also use it to run detailed reports.
Google Analytics excels at providing you with excellent information about who’s coming to your site, what they’re reading, and whether there were any downloads or purchases.
But one of the big problems is that it tells you these facts in total or aggregate.
That creates a ton of gaps in your data.
Staying on top of these problem areas is the only way to get accurate, trustworthy data.
Here are 5 Google Analytics loopholes you probably don’t know about. You can use them to close those gaps ASAP.
1. Beware of falling for vanity metrics
Let’s say your traffic just exploded overnight.
A blog post goes viral when you least expect it. Your Google Analytics shows 100,000+ pageviews.
You feel like an SEO mastermind. The Zuckerberg of keyword research.
But the truth can bring you back down to Earth.
Traffic and pageviews are vanity metrics. Surface-level data like this can’t dictate your marketing decisions.
They’re fun to look at, like window shopping on 5th Avenue in NYC.
But at the end of the day, their beauty is only skin deep.
Why? Those metrics don’t tell you what drives ROI.
Landing 100,000+ hits in a single day can make you feel awesome. Unfortunately, however, the numbers don’t matter if none of those visitors converted.
Any marketer who checks their analytics will head over to “Behavior,” and “All Pages” to sort their traffic by “Source/medium”:
Then they’ll check out which pages are doing well to see what’s working and what’s not.
Just when you think you’re the next Zuckerberg, you look a few boxes to the right and notice that something’s wrong.
The bounce and exit rates show the truth on this page.
The harsh reality is that, while pageviews have shot through the roof, nobody’s sticking around.
All that traffic you worked so hard to get was nearly worthless (except for bragging purposes).
You just spent hours, days, or even weeks on developing that piece of content.
The main focus should’ve been on what that traffic was doing once it hit your site.
Here’s one trick to avoid falling prey to vanity metrics.
Instead of treating these vanity metrics like the end-all, be-all finish line, focus on events, goals, and conversion actions.
Start by heading over to “Behavior” and then “Pages.”
Here, you can click on each page and see what conversion events happened on that page.
Depending on your own Google Analytics setup, you can also get goal conversions here.
You can even get granular with this information to see which form fields or CTAs on the same page performed best.
Moving past vanity metrics is just the first step in a long journey.
The next step is to figure out why your phone is ringing and where the call is coming from.
2. How to see which pages are driving phone calls
The average landing page conversion rate is 2.95%
That’s pretty depressing if you ask me.
Think about what it means for your website.
You spend all of this money on AdWords, create a ton of content for SEO, and spend countless hours on social media. You put in all of this work to drive traffic back to your site.
Only now, you see that most of it bounced!
Fortunately, there is one channel that converts much higher than your website.
Phone calls have the power to convert between 30-50% according to a study from Invoca.
Now that’s more like it!
Just adding a simple phone number to your content might give your 2.95% conversion rate a 25x increase.
It’s that simple, right? What could go wrong?
The problem is that, according to that same Invoca report, digital action drives around 70% of your phone calls.
Those “actions” include searches, ads, and referrals.
And you typically won’t see any of that information inside Google Analytics.
So unless you’ve set it up, your calls might as well be coming out of thin air.
The phone will ring, which is great. But you won’t know why or what’s driving those phone calls, which is bad.
For example, let’s say the caller just became a customer to the tune of $500.
Awesome! However, what did you spend to get that person to the conversion stage in the first place?
Right now, you have no idea.
You’re not even sure if the customer found you via PPC ads, organic search, or direct traffic.
While a new $500 customer sounds great at first, it might not be if you spent $750 to get them in the door.
Thankfully, you can use event tracking again to start getting actionable insights from phone-call data.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start.
Essentially, you’re tracking every ‘event’ that causes someone to click and call your number.
First off, you can setup a click-to-call number by including a tiny line of code before the phone number on your site.
<a href=”tel:+18001112222″>800-111-2222</a>
Now, when someone’s browsing your site on their mobile device, they simply click to call.
Then your data gets wired straight into Google Analytics. Head over to “Behavior,” and then look for “Top Events” under the “Events” drop down.
Next, you can sort those calls by “Source/Medium” to finally see what “digital actions” are driving those calls.
I can hear the question that you’re forming next: “But Neil, where did these calls come from originally?”
To get the answer, add a secondary dimension for “Landing Page.”
That’s not bad for a free tool!
You can now see which landing pages drive the most phone calls and what sources are driving phone calls to your business.
Just remember that these new phone calls might not always result in a closed customer. Here’s what I mean.
3. Conversions are leads, not customers
It’s the end of the month.
Your marketing reports and KPI’s are due are the end of the day.
You’re rounding up campaigns, double-checking your numbers, and getting ready to deliver the goods.
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