As the World Wide Web continues to evolve, so does the need for deriving business intelligence from Internet activity. Insight into visitor interactions on your website is crucial to the success of your digital marketing strategy. True web analysis goes far beyond the tracking of conversions or sales on your website. It is digging into the nitty gritty details of how your website serves its visitors – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

One may wonder if it’s beneficial to perform web analysis on insurance agencies sites and the answer to that is a resounding “YES!” But diving head first into web analytics platforms can seem daunting and overwhelming, so here are three helpful tips to get started. Specifically, we’ll look into Google Analytics, the leader in web analytics market share and the platform used for roughly 50% of the world’s websites.

1. Start with high level in your analysis – visitors.
• How many visitors are coming to your website each week? Are there specific days of the week you see the highest volume? Hours of the day? Can you staff your producers accordingly?
• Where are your visitors located? Google Analytics can identify which cities are generating the most traffic to your website. How is your brand presence and marketing activities in those cities?

2. Identify how your visitors are getting to your website.
• What is the breakdown of your traffic sources? Are your visitors coming to your site directly? Is Google or other search engines (organic) generating traffic to your site through search results? Are your visitors getting referred to you by social media or other partner websites? How can you better optimize these channels with your marketing efforts?

3. Determine which pages are being viewed the most by your visitors.
• Are visitors viewing individual product pages more frequently than others? Are you optimizing the correct products or marketing to the correct niche?
• Do you have traffic to your Contact Us page? Is your location and contact information up to date and easily identifiable?

For beginners, these three areas are great places to start your investigation into your site’s web analytics. As you build up your web analytics acumen, you will come to realize that the insight and information you can derive on your website and its visitors is immense. Stay tuned for future posts as we delve deeper into understanding your website and how to best apply web analysis best practices to your insurance agency website. And, don’t worry. As we move from beginner to advanced together, we’ll be building your website analysis toolbox with real-world examples and applications.