In today’s world, businesses in the real estate industry simply can’t succeed without a website. Chances are if you’re a real estate developer, home builder, or other industry professionals, you already have a website that helps you gain leads and promote your business online. But a website isn’t like a billboard – it’s not a ‘set it and forget it’ tool. To get the most benefit for your business, you need to monitor and improve your site with Google Analytics on a regular basis. But how do you know what to look for and what improvements to make?
Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that gives you insight into how people visit and use your website. When your development or home building business implements Google Analytics, you can get vital information that helps you close leads and target your customers better. In short, Google Analytics gives you these major benefits:
- Insight into your customers
- Insight into your content and website
- Data for improving your marketing
- Information about potential problems
Insight Into Your Customers
One of the most powerful tools that Google Analytics gives you is an insight into who is visiting your website and where they are coming from. This information can help you make better decisions about marketing, outreach, and more.
For example, GA can tell you what percent of your visitors come from different traffic “channels” such as:
- Organic Search (Google, Bing)
- Paid Search (Google Ads, Facebook Ads)
- Social Media (Facebook Pages, Instagram, Houzz, etc)
These reports can help you find opportunities for growth that you didn’t even know existed. You can even get breakdowns of which websites are performing best for your site, such as Facebook vs. Instagram vs. Twitter.
You can also learn more about how your customers use your site, such as the percentage visiting on mobile devices or the number who have visited your site multiple times. With a little tweaking, you can also get advanced demographic information such as age, gender, and interest-based categories.
Insight Into Your Content
Another advantage of using Google Analytics is that it gives you a window into what parts of your site perform best and what your lead path looks like. With just a few steps you can track user visits across your whole site and see how many of those visits turn into conversions.
One example is with blog posts. We’ve all heard how important content marketing is, but it can be hard to measure its effects. With Google Analytics, you can get valuable insights like:
- Which posts attract the newest users
- Which posts keep people on the site the longest
- What pages users visit next
- How many of those users complete conversion actions
Plus, all of these benefits are available to all of your site content, not just blog posts. You can get insights into how visitors behave after viewing home design documents, portfolio pictures, and any other type of content you have. You can even set up custom conversions to track when users download plans or forms, visit your contact page, or click your phone number to give you a call.
Valuable Marketing Data
If you’re like most real estate developers, you probably have a multi-faceted marketing approach that includes many different channels and networks. But beyond measuring clicks and costs, it can be hard to tell how effective these different advertising tools are. Google Analytics gives you important data about your marketing performance, which lets you know where your marketing budget is having the most impact.
For instance, when you connect Google Analytics to Google Ads, you can track users from their initial ad click all the way to their final conversion. You can see how many times those users come back to your site and which ads led them to you, as well as if they used other channels to visit again. You’re even able to track what pages they view after they enter your site and what content most frequently leads to conversions.
Find Potential Problems
Google Analytics isn’t just about tracking user behavior. It can also help you diagnose problems that could affect your SEO or site performance.
For example, Site Speed Reports give you information about how fast your pages load and how long users wait to interact with them. Long load times can indicate problems with your website that could impact user experience and SEO. Similarly, Site Search Reports indicate what terms people search for most often on your site search tool, which could mean they’re having trouble finding that content naturally.
Get Help With Your Site Analytics Today
If you want to make use of the many benefits of Google Analytics, we can help you get started fast. At 90 Decibels, we have more than 25 years of experience working with home builders and real estate developers across the United States. We understand the challenges of this industry and the best ways to overcome them. Contact us today for a free consultation and to learn more about the ways we can help your company succeed online.