If you are wondering what exactly website tracking is or thinking yes I have Google Analytics set up, then please read on as this 5-minute read could save you in the words of Jessie Pinkman “Big Stacks” of cash, each and every hour by stopping the river of money that could be flowing from your business.
So What is Website Tracking?
Website tracking is the process involved in monitoring the actions of online visitors to your website and the performance of the website itself. The most popular type of website free tracking is Google Analytics, however, there are more tools you can use.
Let’s review the types of website tracking you should have set up as standard…
Website Downtime Tracking
Question: How would you know if your website stops working?
So, you’re away from your computer – maybe you’re doing a bit of shopping or taking a quick pilates session at the gym – but all that time your website went offline and wasn’t available to any of your customers. Are you running a Paid Advertising campaign? Ouch, that could be costly. Or have you just sent out a newsletter to all your previous customers sharing your latest blog post?
Despite all the greatest and best website hosting solutions in the world, websites go down. Remember this in the news recently?
That must have cost Facebook a few pounds but, hey, I’m sure they could afford it. Could you take the hit of lost customers and wasted ad spend for a few hours a day?
How to track website downtime?
There are a few tools available on the market – both free and paid. The one I use for my clients is a tool called Status Cake. Here’s a screenshot of one of the websites I manage…
The basic tracking feature here is that it sends “pings” to the website every 15 minutes from locations all over the world to see
- If the website is live or not
- The page load speed
If the website is offline both myself and my client receives an email and text message to our phones. I can then instantly pause their PPC campaign and investigate the issue much faster than without this tool. Better yet, the client has access to a real-time dashboard so they can monitor performance.
Domain and SSL Licence Renewal Tracking
There are a million and one things to remember when running a business: 20 passwords, website hosting, phone contract, payroll, accounts and so many more.
Did you know that companies like Godaddy and 123reg are waiting for you to not renew your domain so they can buy it and sell it back to you at a much higher cost? Or, even worse they will sell it to someone else after its too late?
I buy expired domain names as a hobby. Like many other professionals in the world, this can be an exciting venture, especially as domain names are like the housing industry with demand outgrowing supply, meaning domains can be sat on and sold for an inflated price.
Another awesome feature of Status Cake is they allow you to track an unlimited amount of domain names, and notify you when they expire. These domains could be yours or even your competitors! 🙂
SSL tracking is also available so you can avoid embarrassing welcome messages to your website like this one…
Website Virus Monitoring
One of the most threatening problems of managing a website is that of a Virus attack. There are different forms of threats such as hacking, security misconfiguration, SQL Injection among others. The fact is malware can attack and harm your system. So it’s your duty to protect your site from any kind of problem. But how will you do it?
Another awesome feature of Status Cake is they can scan your website for Viruses and alert you if there are any issues.
With proper detection and monitoring, you can keep your site safe from any kind of hacking or management issues. You will be you should get instant alerts on your site so if it is affected by any virus, you can eliminate it, fast.
Conversion Tracking
Question: You have a load of website visitors, and a good amount of sales coming through but…
- which of your marketing channels do they come from?
- what is your most profitable conversion path?
- which of your website pages are critical for a sale?
- which of your website pages is causing you more harm than good?
- which keywords drive the most sales?
- which keywords are burning?
- which target locations drive the most conversions?
- which devices are you performing best and worst on?
The above are just a few examples of the importance of setting up conversion tracking effectively.
So, what exactly is conversion tracking?
If you run an e-commerce website on a WordPress platform you may already have Woocommerce. By integrating this with your Google Analytics account properly you will uncover a whole range of valuable data that will provide you with the information you need to grow your business.
If you run a service business where web visitors need to contact you before you make a sale, I would urge you to review your website to identify the methods they can contact you and track them. The most common are:
- Contact form completion
- Email click
- Phone call
You could take this one step further and also monitor other conversion driving interactions you want visitors to make. These could include:
- Video view
- Newsletter sign up
- Part contact form completion
By understanding which channels are driving you the best traffic, which areas need improving and which to some extent can be put on the backburner you will grow your business much faster.
I would recommend using a combination of Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to ensure conversion tracking has been implemented correctly.
Website Visitor Monitoring
As a digital marketer, I can send as much good quality traffic to your website as you want. BUT, if this traffic doesn’t take the actions you want them to take on your website what is the point? I need to know, NO, I have to know exactly what website visitors are doing after they click on one of my PPC Ads.
With the cost of some PPC clicks costing up to £70 each, I install a website visitor monitoring tool like Hotjar or Crazyegg.
By reviewing the actual journeys of website visitors you will be presented with the truth, the hard truth of how your website is actually performing. Hotjar gives you 14 days of Free use, at this time you will discover…
- How your website appears on different devices
- What people are actually interacting with
- The flow of your website and how easy it is to navigate
- Any bugs or glitches
- Areas to improve
These are just a few of the things you will learn about your website after setting up website visitor monitoring. By improving the customer experience your conversions will naturally improve along with sales.
In Summary
Whether you manage your own website or you have a freelancer or agency manage it for you. By ensuring you have these website monitoring tools set up and reporting you can have peace of mind if anything goes wrong (it’s just a matter of time before it will) that you will know about it instantly so a quick fix can be made.
Go own it, get on it! Happy monitoring everyone!
