Baseline Website Performance: 5 Things Every Business Must Know - Part 2
In our previous episode of “Between Two Creeks” , we discussed the importance of “measuring” everything. This episode is a continuation of the “analytics” journey we started on, with some great examples on how implementing the strategies we spoke about in real life has given us excellent results!
Let’s go!
Integrations
James: The next thing we want to have in our reports is Integrations. So, what do we mean by integrations?
Ariel: Well, integrations just mean that we're connecting in Facebook, Instagram, Google Analytics (and other traffic sources), and they appear in nice little widgets and little sections on our report – that we can look at in whatever time period we want, just to measure and keep an eye on (the analytics)
James: Online press releases could be an integration that gets plugged in, YouTube videos, Email marketing; if you're using MailChimp or Constant Contact campaigns, Google business profiles…
Your Google Business Profile is massive. It's so important, and I've said this before; it's like a second website. You have your main website, and you have your Google Business Profile and often it's so important. If you haven't optimized that, you need to. That's a separate video, though.
Learn more about optimizing your Google Business Profile here.
Search Engine Optimization
James: The last thing after Integrations would be SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and there are a ton of factors that go into that. But again it's something you have to be measuring and making sure that you're constantly getting better and better. Are the keywords that you rank for in the top 10? Which would be kind of Google's first page? It actually just scrolls infinitely now, but you know your page one ranking is all important; after that, everyone gives up, and no one really goes to page two or, these days, scrolling and rolling infinitely; they don't want to do that.
It's really important that you're gaining more and more top rankings on Google. So, why should people care about ranking on Google?
Ariel: Well, if you can't be found, no one's going to come to your site, right?
James: So it's all about website traffic.
Ariel: Yeah, absolutely!
Let’s Talk About Measuring & Improving Website Traffic
Ariel: So, I think it's valuable to give some practical tips on how we can measure and even improve website performance.
Number one on that is;
You have to track everything that goes out.
1. Tracking Everything
We obviously track everything via UTM’s, which is super valuable. These just basically tell the Google Tags in the back end of your site where that traffic came from, and categorize them. So, track absolutely everything you can!
James: This episode is super nerdy, there's so much lingo in here! But you're probably not watching this if you're not really interested in data analysis for the marketing world.
So UTM - I only just understand it myself, but cut out the tags. What does UTM stand for?
Ariel: Urchin Tracking Module!
James: What? you know that?!
Ariel: I do! I mean, my name's Ariel. It's like a Little Mermaid reference!
James: It’s just a term that makes zero sense!
Ariel: I know, That's why I remember it, because it's so weird.
James: I thought you totally kidding when you said it!
Ariel: I'm serious. It's “Urchin Tracing Module”!
2. Determine Relevant Keywords
Ariel: The other really important part of improving your website performance is determining the keywords that you want to rank for. Determining your keywords essentially gives you a pretty good idea of your roadmap for what your target is and what you're shooting for exactly.
James: Otherwise, you're just wandering the desert in terms of search and optimization. So you need a Google Keyword List; That's what we call it. Then, you use that same keyword list not only for Organic SEO but also for your Google Paid Ads, your Pay-Per-Click campaigns and even social ads across the board.
3. Monitor and Analyze Website Traffic
Ariel: Monitoring and analyzing your traffic, even just your website - what's going on there... I think that's a huge part of analytics. Like you said earlier, if you're not tracking it, you have no idea what's going on. You don't know if you're winning or not.
So that's obviously a huge part of it. Hand in hand with that, we are tracking goal conversions, and I would say even here, making sure your goal conversions are smart is important. For example, a goal of a “Contact Page View” doesn't tell us a lot. Filling out a contact form does, though. When someone converts to completing a form rather than just a view, it's a lot more valuable.
James: Funny enough, we had inherited an account, and the website goals were all about “Time on site”, “Number of pages visited,” and a bunch of obscure goals that were meaningless for the business owner. The business owner is like “Well how many people actually sign up for our thing or fill out our form or download our brochure – that mattered in terms of dollars and cents?” Because all the goals being measured were just fluffy.
So yeah, you need Smart Goals.
4. Optimizing Page Speed
James: Optimizing the page speed is a cool, practical tip.
That's something that not everyone thinks about. It is a bit of a technical thing so often, your developer/programmer needs to get involved in that and see how the website can be improved on the speed side of things. Google really really punishes slow-moving websites, slow-loading websites, files that are too big, images that are too big, and videos that are forced to play or load before the page actually loads. So there are all these things that need to happen that are really important for the page speed.
Ariel: On that note, Google has a free tool, a website where you can pop in whatever URL you want and switch from mobile or desktop to see what your speed is currently. So that's kind of cool.
Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool
5. Collaborate
James: The last tip is to “collaborate”. That's right, and by this we mean get to know people that are smarter than you. That's one of the keys to success in any business. I think I talked about this in our “Winning” episode. Surround yourself with smart people.
The Theory In Action
James: We've been talking a lot about Theory - advantages and pros and cons of why measure and what to do and how to do it. What tools to use, etc but let's talk about a few key examples in our company that we've seen, with the results - so bring it down to a very practical level.
Ariel: We work with Space Centre Storage here in Kelowna, and it's a pretty cool success story! We actually maintained the number one spot on Google, which is very cool. Meaning that they're going to rank first when you type in their name.
James: We have been focusing on SEO over a long period of time which is what allowed them to rank first place for their primary services - which in turn greatly increases their website traffic. And then, that affected their bottom line in a really good way. If you're measuring the numbers, then you can know what to improve. You find out how to do that, and then you actually do improve, and you know the proof is in the pudding where it comes out in happy customers and happy business owners.
Ariel: To add to that, the really cool thing is they were ranked for 135 keywords in Google's Top 10 Listings, which is very cool. That's pretty major!
James: They more or less dominated, and sometimes, when you get a point where you're really, really strong, it's harder for the competitors to knock you off the throne, especially on a local front. It’s hard to do nationally but in the end it's the same thing.


Another HVAC company we worked with, they saw a huge increase in website traffic, about 300% more, once we started implementing some of these strategies. We took their baseline and went, “Hey, there's all these opportunities that are not being followed on. Let's follow up on this and let's make your strategy a lot more different, in different directions simultaneously!”. We're not depending on one channel. We've seen companies that spend their entire marketing budget only on Facebook, but there are 900 other places to reach your customers, and maybe Facebook is a good one but it certainly isn't the only one.
Measuring that lets you find out if it is or not. That's the whole point. Another example is a Boat Rental company, a marina actually, that we work with locally here called Downtown Marina. They had really good success when we started working with them too, and increased their online revenue and their online bookings for boats tremendously. It just went through the roof!
So these are just practical examples of the results you can expect, but only if you work with a certain marketing agency that will remain nameless (Hint; It’s called Twin Creek Media!).
We're going to cut that out because that was unbelievably cheesy, so before we sing “under the sea” one more time for a Little Mermaid, we'll leave it at that.

Check out our previous episode: Baseline Website Performance: 5 Things Every Business Must Know - Part 1
“Between Two Creeks” is Twin Creek Media’s weekly podcast series. You can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify. If you enjoy listening to the latest and wonkiest in marketing every week, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button! If you want us to amp up your marketing, click here to contact us and let’s chat!